Writing Graffiti on Your Body
by knittycat99
Summary: Kurt, Finn, Sarah and Noah have all lost a parent, but they have each other.  But how does Dave fit in?  AU, Noah and Sarah are twins.  Co-authored with nubianamy.
1. Chapter 1

_(One of nubianamy's kind and protective readers expressed concerns about plagiarism after seeing this story posted at both of our author spaces; I want to make it VERY clear that we are co-authors. amy, you're simply amazing!)_

* * *

><p><span>Part One: Elementary School<span>

The night the cops came and finally took Danny Puckerman to jail, Sarah pulled Noah away from the dinner table when the china started flying and pushed him up the hall into the closet of their shared bedroom. He wanted out of the dark, but she held onto him until the sirens were gone and Mom was crying at the kitchen table. When they emerged, wide-eyed into the heavy silence, Noah was clutching at her hand like he wanted her to hold him together.

Mom held them both in her lap then and whispered to them that Daddy was going away and not coming back, told them that she would protect them. She had been good at that for a long time, until Daddy started coming home late and not going to work. After that, all they could do was hide, because even when Daddy was bear-mad and screaming, Mom was right back in his face hollering that he wasn't ever going to lay a hand on the kids, not even if he killed her first.

He had tried, that night. Sarah didn't know who had called the cops, but it didn't matter in the end. Somebody called, the cops came, and the worst they were left with were broken dinner dishes, Mom's black eye and bloody nose, and Noah's nightmares.

He slept in Sarah's bed for over a month, wouldn't talk to anyone but that shy Finn kid who sat behind him in school, or to Sarah in their babble of twin-talk that drove Mom crazy. Sarah supposed they were lucky to have each other, and that Finn didn't care what happened with Daddy, because everyone else sure did. Sarah could hear the whispers that followed them in the halls at school, in the supermarket, on the playground. She felt the stares boring holes between her shoulders.

She hated them, all of them, because they didn't know what it was like to have a dad one minute and have him be gone the next.

* * *

><p>Kurt missed almost as much school as he attended; that was just how things were since his mom got sick and had to go to the hospital in Columbus. He was just as glad, really, not to go to school. He liked the learning part okay, he just didn't like the other kids, so he was perfectly happy to snuggle up with his mom in her hospital bed and read to her, or have her help him with his math and social studies worksheets.<p>

Only one day, she was too tired to listen to him read. Then she couldn't help with math, either. That was when his dad started having whispered conversations with doctors in the hallway, and Aunt Mildred came and stayed with him at the house while Dad stayed in Columbus. That was when Kurt went back to school, until the day his dad showed up in the middle of music class and hugged him in the hallway and told him that Mommy was gone.

He didn't go to school for two weeks after that, but when he did he wished he could be somebody else. The kids had always laughed at him, teased him, but things were different now. Now he was the boy whose mother died, and they all just looked at him in silence with sad, scared expressions on their faces.

He didn't sing in music class, didn't talk to anyone. He hadn't been in school enough to make friends in his class, really, so he ate lunch alone and wandered the edge of the playground at recess thinking about his mom and trying not to cry.

* * *

><p>Finn thought that Sarah Puckerman might be the bossiest person in the whole third grade, and her brother was definitely the funniest, until something happened at their house. Finn didn't really know what that was, only that it made Noah quiet and Sarah protective, and the other kids looked at them funny and teachers whispered behind their backs.<p>

Finn didn't think that was fair. He knew what it was like; he'd heard if before he knew what it meant, _that poor Hudson boy, his father died in the Gulf, you know._It wasn't his fault his dad died, or that his mom was raising him alone. It didn't mean he was bad, or that there was anything wrong with his mom. He just didn't understand why it bothered people.

Sometimes Finn felt like he was the only one who realized that whatever had happened to Sarah and Noah wasn't their fault.

He was just getting friendly with Noah when that Kurt kid came back to class. He'd missed a lot of school, weeks of it at a time, but nobody knew why until Finn overheard Ms. Kenyon talking with Mr. Jacobs across the hall about how sad it was, that Kurt's mom was in the hospital in Columbus, that she was dying. Finn hadn't known anyone who had died, because he really hadn't _known _his dad, but he did know what it was like to only have one parent.

He watched Kurt for a week before he made his move. He waited until Kurt had almost completed his lap of the playground at recess before he darted out from where he was sitting with Noah under the monkey bars and grabbed Kurt's wrist. Kurt tried to yank away.

"Stop it! Let go!"

Finn just held tighter. "Come here."

He pulled Kurt into the cage-like area where Noah was digging at the rubber tire pieces with a stick, and tugged at him until they were both sitting.

"I'm Finn. This is Noah."

Kurt just rolled his eyes at them. "I _know_who you are. I'm not stupid."

"You just missed a lot of school."

"Yeah. My mom . . ." Finn watched Kurt turn his head, blink his eyes a couple of times and swallow hard. Finn wasn't sure what to say, so he stuck with the truth.

"I know. My dad died when I was a baby."

Kurt's eyes went wide. "Oh."

Noah just kept digging with his stick, sending the rubber bits flying. Finn nudged him with his knee; Noah talked to him, and to Sarah in that weird made-up language, but would barely even look at anyone else. He didn't say a word to Finn then, just nodded his head.

"Noah's dad is gone, too." He lowered his voice then, ducking his head to whisper into Kurt's ear. "I don't know what happened, he's just gone somewhere."

Kurt inched in, closed their little circle so that his knees were touching Finn on one side and Noah on the other. "I hate the way everyone looks at me."

Finn almost fell over when Noah dropped his stick and looked at Kurt. "Me, too," he said, his voice soft and unsure.

Finn just waited, because he could see that Noah had something else to say. Only it wasn't Noah who said it. It was Sarah, pushing her way through the metal rungs to join them. She held her head up and looked right at Kurt. "Our dad's in jail, for beating up our mom. And for drugs. But mostly for beating up our mom."

Finn wanted to laugh because Kurt clearly hadn't spent any kind of time around either of the Puckerman twins before their dad left; he looked like he wanted to run away until Sarah smoothed her hand over his hair. She was looking at Kurt, but talking to all of them.

"It's okay. We can take care of each other, now."

When the recess bell rang, Finn followed behind the others. He smiled as he watched them walk, Sarah in the middle, firmly gripping Kurt's hand on one side and Noah's on the other.

* * *

><p>Burt threw his truck into park and all but ran into the school. He was late again, fourth time this month, and he wasn't sure how much longer the teacher who ran Kurt's after-school program would be so forgiving. She hadn't said anything yet, and hadn't charged him the late pickup fee, for which he was grateful, but he really did mean to be on time. For Kurt, as much as for himself.<p>

When he skidded to a stop in the doorway of the school gym, he was surprised to see Kurt sitting in a corner with three other kids. One was a scrawny, sandy-haired boy, and the other two were darker, with identical golden brown skin and curly dark brown hair. _Siblings, maybe even twins_, Burt thought.

Kurt was bent over a book, and the others were listening with rapt attention as he read aloud until one of the siblings - he thought she was a girl - noticed the motion of the teacher next to Burt. She stared him down across the room, clearly daring him to interrupt, so he just stood and waited.

The teacher nearby leaned in. "Don't mess with Mama Bear," she said in a low voice.

Burt regarded the girl with the piercing glare and her friends. "Who is she? Who are they?"

The teacher pointed to the scrawny boy. "Finn Hudson. And the others are the Puckerman twins. Noah and Sarah. Sarah's something of their protector."

"Huh." Kurt hadn't mentioned anything about friends at school, but neither of them had really been talking much, lately. Burt just watched, then, taking in the way the group was sitting, all cross-legged with their knees touching, Sarah with one little hand on Kurt's ankle where it poked out from under his jeans, the other hand on her brother's knee. He watched, and waited, until a pair of frantic footsteps turned his attention to two women who had rushed through the door, much as he himself had done. They halted next to him in the gym doorway. The shorter woman gasped, almost to herself.

"_Oh_."

Burt turned and looked, didn't have to ask, but did anyway. "Which one is yours?"

"Finn. The taller one. Yours?"

"Kurt." Burt waved his hand at his son. "With the book."

The other woman's voice was warm and rich. "Which makes the other two devils mine. Sarah and Noah." Then, in almost an aside to the shorter woman. "I didn't know the twins knew Finn."

The shorter woman sighed. "There's a lot I don't know, these days."

Burt took in two pairs of scrubs, two pairs of battered clogs, two hospital id tags and two exhausted faces. He held out his hand. "Burt Hummel."

"Carole Hudson." Carole's hand was cool from outside; she wasn't wearing a coat.

"Ruth Puckerman," said the other woman.

"You two know each other."

"We're both nurses, in the ER at Lima Memorial."

Burt hadn't seen either of them here before, at pickup. But most days, even when he was on time, Kurt was the last one remaining, so that wasn't surprising. He'd had Tony opening the garage so that he could get Kurt up and ready and to school on time, which meant that he _hadn't _had Tony to close up in the evenings, which was why Kurt had to go to after school care in the first place. Burt was overwhelmed just thinking about it, and he rubbed his hand over his face before he got on to thinking about Elizabeth. Carole's voice reached him then, soft and kind.

"I'm so sorry about your wife."

Burt choked out a startled thank you, and shuffled a bit when Carole fixed both him and Ruth with a stare. "It gets easier. It takes time, but it gets easier. Okay?"

Burt shook his head, and Ruth let out a bitter laugh. "I'm sorry?" Burt managed to engage his brain, but still felt like he was missing something.

"Being a single parent. Finn's dad was killed in the Gulf War right after Finn was born. I've been doing this a long time. It's never going to be perfect, but it gets easier."

Burt didn't know what to say about that. All he knew right then was that he missed his wife and he felt like he was barely pretending at taking care of Kurt, and he'd somehow found his way into the orbits of these two women just because their kids were sitting in the corner together like some little cult or something.

He stuttered a little and adjusted his ballcap. "I gotta . . . Kurt. Dinner." He was about to cross the gym when he noticed the teacher leaning over, one hand on Sarah's shoulder and nodding with her head toward the three adults waiting. The kids got up en masse, shrugged into coats and shouldered backpacks, and walked over, Sarah in the middle with Kurt and Noah by their hands, Finn a few steps behind but with a watchful eye on the others.

Kurt broke away and threw himself into Burt's arms. God, he was so little, and so free with his affections. Burt whispered into the soft of his son's hair. "Good day, kiddo?"

"Okay. We were reading, and I didn't get to finish." He sounded dejected.

"Sorry, buddy. Maybe you can finish tomorrow. It's time to get home. Dinner."

"Oh."

Burt noticed Finn tucking himself under his mother's arm. "Mom, can we go to Cici's for pizza? Please?"

Carole closed her eyes, and her face reflected a look Burt was learning all too well. Pizza, albeit cheap and plentiful, versus heat or mortgage or gas for the car, or how much overtime at the end of the month? It was too much, some days.

Kurt grabbed onto the idea as well. "Please, Dad? Pizza? Cici's has salad _and_dessert. Dessert, Dad!" They hadn't had dessert, not real dessert, since Elizabeth died. Burt pretended to stop and think about it for a moment before smiling down at Kurt.

"Okay." He looked at Ruth, at Noah standing quietly with his hand still in his sister's, at Sarah, whose eyes were penetrating and strong, and too old for eight. "Would you all like to join us?"

Ruth paused, and then nodded. "Okay. I didn't have anything thawed anyway."

* * *

><p>Carole thought it would be good for the kids to sit at their own table, which made the kids look proud. Burt knew it was really so the grownups could talk. After they'd worked through sodas and pizza and salad and dessert, Kurt pulled out his book and finished reading whatever had kept them so enthralled in the gym, and Burt leaned back in his chair.<p>

"I can keep the kids, all of them, in the afternoons next month." Carole and Ruth just looked at him. He closed his eyes, but kept talking. "It'll be warm, and Schoonover Park is right across the street from my garage. It would be easier, if one of you has to work late."

They all knew what he was offering: the relief of not having to find $125 a kid for the afterschool or the added stress of those nights when work just went long.

Carole nodded at him. "You live on Maple, right?"

"Yeah."

"We're just on Cedar. If you want, I can drive Kurt to school with us in the mornings."

Burt thought about the extra time in the mornings, how if he moved opening back to 8:30 instead of 8 he could put Tony back on closing and then he wouldn't have to keep the kids at the garage at all; he could take them to the park, or to the house, and it would be better for all of them.

"Thank you. That would be . . ." The unexpected kindness of these near-strangers was surprising. There hadn't been much kindness, not when Elizabeth was sick at least. After she died it had come in a wave, but now all Burt got anywhere were pitying looks when what he needed was some damn help. He swallowed around the brief surge of anger. "That would be wonderful."

Ruth had been silent through the whole exchange, but when she spoke she sounded drained. "We live on Vine. I could take the mornings you have an early shift, Carole. Or," she leveled her gaze at Burt, with eyes like her daughter's, "when I work early I could trade afternoons with you, Burt. That way none of us has to bear the whole burden."

Burt wanted to take exception for a moment, because Kurt was in no way a burden, but he understood what Ruth was trying to say. He nodded at her. "I think that's a good idea. I think the kids will like it, too. Kurt hasn't really had any friends, and he missed so much school."

"Will he still be promoted with the class?" Carole sounded concerned.

"Yeah. They were really good about giving us these packets. Kurt's a smart kid, he's kept up just fine. It's the friends thing I worry about."

"I guess it's good they found each other, then, huh?" Carole looked over to the kids' table, where Finn was taking a turn reading.

Burt crossed his arms across his chest, and smiled to himself. He felt something loosen inside, something he'd held tight to for longer than he'd like to admit. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe it will be good for us, too."

* * *

><p>Finn's mom got him a football for his birthday, because he was old enough for the rec department flag football team. He brought it to school every day and to the park or Kurt's house in the afternoons. He didn't really know how to play, but Noah kind of did. Finn guessed that maybe Mr. Puckerman had played ball with Noah, back before things went bad, because Noah helped Finn arrange his fingers on the laces, and showed Finn how to throw a spiral. It didn't go very far; Finn wasn't very strong, and he was a little clumsy sometimes, but Noah always seemed to know just where Finn was going to throw it. He caught it every time. On the days that they were at Kurt's house, Mr. Hummel would come out in the yard with them and play. <em>He<em>showed Finn how to get more power in his throw, which Finn thought was pretty cool. He felt bad, though, that Kurt never played.

Kurt never wanted to play. At least, not football. Kurt liked what Sarah liked, drawing and reading and quiet things that made Finn want to crawl out of his skin. So Kurt and Sarah would sit on the back patio at the Hummel house, or next to the fountain at the park, and whisper and read or whatever while Finn and Puck played football.

But on the way home, or getting ready for snack in Kurt's kitchen, they would all sing. Not Mr. Hummel, because his voice was awful, but the four of them. Finn had all these old cassette tapes that had been his dad's, and they were the same kind of songs that Mr. Hummel liked, so Finn and Kurt usually knew the words. He was kind of surprised that Noah and Sarah did, too. The first few times, Noah got quiet and Sarah got all stiff, until Kurt told Finn that Sarah told him that their dad used to play guitar and sing, and he had taught them a lot of those songs, too.

The next time they got in Mr. Hummel's car, Finn leaned over and whispered to Noah. "It's okay to like music. It doesn't mean anything about you, or your dad."

Noah sang along after that. Softly. Finn kind of liked it when he did.

* * *

><p>"I got these for our birthday last summer," said Sarah, holding up the black box of markers. "They're real artist markers. I can draw anything with them. Seriously - anything. Go ahead, pick something."<p>

They were stretched out on the floor of Finn's family room, waiting for Mrs. Hudson to be ready to take them to school. Noah had the box of Honeycomb, and Finn kept taking handful after handful from the box. Kurt didn't know why Finn didn't just take the whole box, but if Finn didn't mind reaching over Noah to dig into his lap for more cereal, he wasn't going to bring it up.

"Um," said Finn. "A dog?"

"Easy," Sarah boasted, sliding the brown Prismacolor marker from its space. She began to color on the blank page in her sketchbook.

"What did you get, Noah?" Kurt asked. "For your birthday?"

For a minute, Kurt wasn't sure if Noah was going to reply. He didn't always. Sometimes Sarah ended up talking for him; other times the answer came out an hour later, usually out of context. But finally, the dark-haired boy stirred, and said, softly, "A guitar."

"It wasn't Dad's guitar," said Sarah. "It was an awesome one. It has an amp pickup and everything. Give me something else to draw."

"A mermaid," suggested Kurt, and she gamely selected light blues and greens for the scales.

"Can you play?" Finn asked, with apparent awe, taking another huge handful of cereal.

"A little," Noah said. He hesitated. "I learned the chords for that song we sang yesterday in the car. The one about Superman."

"I love that song," Finn said, smiling wistfully. "I'm totally asking for a drum set for my next birthday."

They all listened but did not comment on Finn's wish, knowing a drum set was without a doubt a much too expensive present for any of them to get, but knowing equally well that to step on someone else's wish was the worst kind of insult any of them could receive. They'd never do that, not to each other.

"Draw a drum set for Finn," Kurt whispered to Sarah.

"Already on it," she whispered back, showing him the page where she'd begun the picture. "What about you? What did you get for your birthday?"

"It's not important," he said, feeling himself blush.

"Yeah, it is," she insisted. "I want to know."

Kurt mumbled an answer, too quiet to hear. "What?" she said, leaning closer.

"A pair of silver slippers," he whispered. "Like the ones Dorothy had."

"I thought they were ruby slippers," she said, confused.

"That was in the movie," he said. "In the book, they were silver."

"Oh," she said. Into the pause, she selected her silver marker, and Kurt watched in silence as she began to draw a pair of elegant heels. "Would you read that book to us next?" she asked. "After you finish A Wrinkle in Time?"

"Sure," he said, slipping a hand into hers.

* * *

><p>Noah liked to sit on the edge of the fountain in Schoonover Park, as close as he could get to the spray without actually letting it touch his skin. Sarah, on the other hand, just put her feet right in and didn't even care if the cuffs of her jeans got wet, which drove Noah crazy. The water wasn't the cleanest, but it was really the feeling of wet denim that made his skin crawl.<p>

Sarah gazed across the fountain at Kurt, then Finn, and finally Noah. "I can do magic," she announced.

"How?" asked Kurt, dangling his bare arm in the fountain. The water was freezing cold, so cold that submerging a limb made it tingly and numb for a time, but it didn't seem to bother Kurt.

"My markers." Sarah held up her black box of Prismacolors. "I drew a question mark on my arm, here - " She rolled up her sleeve and showed them the stylized symbol. "- and immediately I got the answer to a question I'd been wondering about. It was like a Magic Eight Ball, guys, only better. Here, Noh, give me your arm."

Noah rolled up his sleeve and offered Sarah the inside of his elbow. She considered the blank canvas with a critical eye. "We should only use our powers for good," she declared solemnly. "I know: I'll draw something you're afraid of, and my magic will protect you." One eyebrow went up, but he didn't resist as she drew a hand on his skin. It was black and solid, like a tattoo.

"There," she said, with satisfaction. "Now no one can touch you." He slowly rolled down his sleeve, and didn't take his hand away from the spot on his arm for a long time.

"I want something to keep me on time," Finn said, presenting his skinny forearm. "A clock?"

"How about an hourglass," she suggested, and he nodded. "You know we don't care when you're late," she added, outlining the shape with blue marker.

"I know," he said. "But my mom does, and she said if I'm late to school again I can forget about that drum set we're saving up for." Noah inspected the hourglass on Finn's skin with silent appreciation, tracing it with a finger.

"Kurt?" she said.

"I don't know," he said, hands dripping from the fountain. "Drawing on your skin. Is it safe?"

"Let me check," Sarah said. She covered the question mark on her arm and concentrated. "Yes," she said with certainty, choosing a purple marker. "It's safe. And you need a butterfly."

Kurt didn't question Sarah any further, but he was slow to dry off his hands and unbutton his shirt cuff. "You can't be the only one who doesn't get the magic," she said, as though it were obvious.

"Yeah," said Noah, surprising them all. "You're the most magical of all of us, anyway."

They were silent, watching Sarah work her magic on Kurt's pale skin. "Why a butterfly?" Kurt asked. "Is it the metamorphosis thing? 'Cause I'm not really sure I want to change into anything else."

"Well, you're beautiful," said Sarah, and it wasn't embarrassing from her, it was just a fact, and they all knew it.

"Butterflies don't need moms," said Noah. "Or dads. They're just... whole, in themselves."

Kurt's mouth trembled a little, but he thought about this. "I still want my mom back," he said.

"I didn't say they didn't _want_ their moms and dads," said Noah. "Just that they didn't _need_them."

"Oh," said Kurt, and he smiled, a rare, real smile, as he inspected the butterfly. "Well, that's fine, then."

* * *

><p><span>June, Portsmouth New Hampshire<span>

David hugged the ragged edges of the neighborhood lawns as he trudged home from school. He'd learned early that walking down the middle of the sidewalk only made him a beacon for the older, faster, _skinnier_ kids who barreled home on their bikes, or liked to pick a target on his back with basketballs and footballs. He kept his head down, dragged his backpack behind him. He repeated the whispered words that had gotten him through the school year; he'd smiled, last week, when his countdown shifted from double to single digits. It was even better today. _Five days left. Five days left_. He rounded the last corner onto his street, and wrapped his fingers around the string under his t-shirt to reach for his house key. It was warm from laying snug against his skin all day, and he kind of liked the way it felt, the heat radiating into the tips of his fingers.

But when he got closer to his house, he realized he wasn't going to need his key.

He shook his head against the unexpected sight of both his parent's cars in the drive, and of his mom, tossing a duffel bag into the wayback of the station wagon, and his sister Lilly, her tiny face twisted up in anger. He could hear her, halfway down the block.

"Noooooooo! I want to stay with Davey!" He wasn't fast, but he booked it the rest of the way, dropping his backpack at the edge of the driveway and pulling her into his arms. He was too short to hold her well; her legs dangled down, and her plastic My Little Pony sandals hit him right at his knees. She buried her face in his neck.

David wheeled on his mother. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, Davey." Her hair was flyaway, and her eyes were liquid and dark, they way they got when she finished the better part of a bottle of wine with dinner. "My sweet boy, my baby. Mommy loves you so so so much, but I can't stay here anymore."

"Why not?" David felt the warm and wet of Lilly's tears sliding under the neck of his t-shirt.

"Daddy thinks I need help." She ran a cool hand along the side of his face, and he pulled away. "You don't think that, do you?"

David shook his head. He knew better than to disagree when she was like this. "No, Mommy." He hated lying, but sometimes telling the truth was worse. "Where are you going?"

"Lilly and I are going to see Aunt Laura, baby, at the beach." She closed the back of the car, and rested a hand on top of Lilly's head. David felt her shiver at the touch, and whimper a little. "Won't that be fun?"

"No, Mommy, no, I want to stay with Davey." Lilly's voice was muffled; David was having trouble holding her, so he sat with her in the grass and pulled her into his lap.

"Lillian Anna Karofsky, you're coming with me to see Aunt Laura at the beach, and that's final."

David brushed Lilly's strawberry blonde curls away from her face, and tucked his face into her so he could whisper in her ear. "Lilly-belle, it's okay." She turned and looked at him, her eyes so old and serious, too old for four. "Go with Mommy. Don't fight about it, it will only make it worse."

"I'm scared."

"I know. Here . . " David tugged on his key, and shifted Lilly so he could work the knot at the back of his neck. When he'd undone it, he snapped a long piece off to shorten it, and tied it off so it would fit Lilly. He slipped the string and they key over her head, and tucked the key under the front of her pink flowered sundress. "This will keep you safe until you can come home again, okay?"

"O-okay." Her voice was shaky, but she let her little hand rest over the lump the key made under her dress and smiled a tiny smile. "I love you, Davey."

"I love you, too, Lilly-belle. I'll always be your big brother, okay?"

Lilly looked panicked. "We're coming back, right?"

David thought about being younger than Lilly, about the yelling and doors slamming and the car squealing out of the drive. About the few times it had been just he and Daddy for days, peaceful and quiet until Mommy whirled back into their lives. "I don't know. She's always come back before." But something felt different this time.

David looked to where his mom was waiting, leaning against the car door. "C'mon, Lil. I'll help you get into your seat." He held her hand across the driveway, lifted her up into her booster in the back seat, and handed her the sippy cup of juice that had been sitting, abandoned, in the driveway. He kissed her soft cheek. "Have fun at the beach," he called as his mom pulled out of the drive. But he didn't believe his own good wishes, any more than he believed he'd be seeing his mom or sister any time soon.

The next morning, when David's dad called Aunt Laura down the Cape to see how mom and Lilly were, David wasn't surprised to find out that they'd never shown up.

They heard nothing for weeks, and then in July David's dad came home from work and told David that the company that ran the paper mill needed him to go to another mill in Oregon. They packed up and moved, left a change of address with everyone they could think of, but David just knew: his sister was gone, and he'd never see her again.


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two: Middle School

Noah didn't care about clothes and things, not the way that Kurt did, but he spent an extra minute getting ready for school the first day. He liked the way his too-small shirt showed off his biceps. They'd kind of popped at the beginning of August, after his growth spurt, and he thought they were pretty cool. He was still too skinny, but not like Finn was. He also wasn't as tall as Finn, but he was taller than Kurt, and that had to be worth something. He tugged a little at his mop of brown curls; he hated his hair, thought it made him look like a dork, but Ma would kill him if he cut it, so he was just going to have to deal.

He grabbed his backpack and went to pound on Sarah's door. He could feel her music in his feet as he banged.

"Sas! Hurry up! We're gonna be late, and Kurt'll be pissed. C'mon!"

"Be right there. Grab me a granola bar, Noh?"

"Yeah." He was halfway down the stairs when the music stopped and Sarah's door swung open. The clatter of her boots followed him down the stairs, into the kitchen, and out the back door. Sarah locked it with her key, and only after they were on their way to Kurt's to meet him and Finn did Noah actually look at his sister.

"Sas, Ma is going to kill you." Her hair hung, long and straight, down her back. No curls in sight. "What did you do?"

"Kurt showed me. I straightened it."

Noah felt a momentary pang of something in his chest. He liked Sarah's hair, liked the way it made them so visibly twins. He liked being a twin. He swallowed around wanting to ask _don't you want to be my sister anymore_because that was something he would have thought when they were kids, back before he knew better. Instead, he smiled and bumped her with his shoulder as they walked.

"Why'd you do it? I mean, it looks good, but why?"

"Haven't you ever wanted to be somebody else?"

Noah tucked his hand into hers for a brief moment. They were almost too old for it, but it still made Noah feel safe. He thought on her words, looked at his feet. Sighed. "All the time."

Sarah stopped at the corner of Kurt's street. She turned on Noah, her eyes full of fire. "So do it. Be someone else. It's junior high, Noh." She let her voice drift to a whisper. "All these kids are new. They don't know us here. _We can be anyone we want_."

She sounded excited, and it was a little contagious. "Who do you want to be, Noh?"  
>He thought about football, about playing guitar, about wanting to get rid of the last vestiges of scared little-boy Noah who didn't talk. He rolled names over in his head, burying boyhood somewhere deep inside. In the instant before he reached out to knock on Kurt's door, he raised his head and looked at his sister.<p>

"Call me Puck."

* * *

><p>"Do I have to?" said Finn, cocking his head to one side. He untied his soccer cleats and let them fall to the floor of the Hudmel kitchen with a wet thud. "I'd rather just keep calling you Noah."<p>

"What's wrong with Puck?" He rolled his shoulders, standing powerfully in the midst of the name. "I looked it up. It's a kind of magical creature."

"I thought it was something you slap around in hockey," Finn said, shaking his head. "And I want to play football."

Puck grinned and put his hands on his hips, every inch the knavish sprite. "Nobody slaps this Puck around. But, whatever, Finn. You can call me Noah if you want. Can you call me Puck at school, though?"

"Okay," Finn said, shrugging. "I guess."

Puck's expression deviated from cockiness to mischief. "I need help with one other thing. Come on."

They crept into his parents' room, past their big double bed and into the bathroom. Puck appropriated Burt's clippers and took the guard off. "I want to get rid of this fucking hair."

Finn glanced around nervously, as though Burt might appear out of nowhere and chastise them for swearing, but Burt and his mom were at work. They were alone. "Why?" He ran a hand through his own nondescript brown hair. "I - your hair is awesome."

"This will be more awesome," Puck promised. "Come on, I can't do it alone. I need your help."

Finn thought a second, then got out a towel and spread it on the floor in front of the toilet. "Can you sit there?" he said. "You're too tall for me to reach standing up." Finn was still taller, but Puck was quickly catching up. Puck sat, and Finn put a hand on his neck, feeling Puck's curls between his fingers with a sense of dread.

"Your mom's going to freak out," Finn said.

Puck shrugged, a gesture Finn attributed to Sarah more than to Noah - but maybe Puck was different. "She won't be able to do anything about it, will she?"

Finn felt a shock. "You're not afraid?"

"Puck's not afraid of anything," Puck boasted, putting one hand on Finn's. Their fingers clasped, as familiar as breathing. He looked up at Finn. "Come on. I trust you."

"Like - all of it?"

"How about a mohawk?" Puck said, giggling, and they both snorted with laughter. "Wouldn't that be totally badass?"

"It'd be different," Finn said, turning on the clippers. They buzzed against Noah's neck. "That's for sure. Is that what you want?"

"Yeah," said Puck. "I want to be different. Sarah says I can make myself anybody I want to be."

"What's wrong with you the way you are?" Finn said. "I like you."

He felt Puck shiver as the clippers slid against the back of his head, and a shower of curls fell to the towel. "Well, duh," he said, but his voice was uneasy.

Finn drew a line with his finger, from Puck's forehead down to the nape of his neck, then, with a deep breath, said, "Don't move." Puck held as still as the moon while Finn cleared the curls from one side of his head, then did the same on the other. They didn't talk any more as Finn concentrated on shaving all the hair from Puck's scalp.

The skin underneath was noticeably paler than Puck's neck, and Finn couldn't help run a finger over the soft pale expanse. Puck let out a surprised breath, like a gasp in reverse, a little puff of air, and Finn felt it in his gut.

"How's it look?" Puck asked, with an unsteady voice.

Finn had to swallow twice before he could answer. "I need to cut the middle part shorter," he said. "How do you put the guard back on?"

Puck showed him where it slid on, and he handed it back to Finn, who took it, watching Puck touch his own head. Finn was almost embarrassed to watch him do that. He was touching a part of his body that hadn't seen daylight in eleven years. _I got to touch it first,_Finn thought, and he suddenly broke out in goosebumps all over.

"Do you want to do this part?" he asked, hearing his voice suddenly break and shift into a man's voice, something it was doing more and more often these days. It made Puck look up at him, and he didn't smile.

"I want you to do it," he said quietly. "It's okay, right?"

"Yeah," said Finn. "Of course it's okay."

He wiped the sweat off his suddenly clammy hands and used the clippers to trim Puck's stripe of curls down to a length at which the curl disappeared. Now Puck's eyes looked huge, dark bruised patches in a golden face, his cheekbones more pronounced. Finn helped him to his feet and stood beside him as he inspected himself in the mirror.

"What do you think?" Puck asked, feeling how short it was in the back.

"Um," said Finn, and he weighed the words _You're gorgeous_on his tongue before saying, "It's not bad." Somehow he immediately felt ashamed, as though he'd let Puck down by telling him something that wasn't the complete truth.

"What do you think Kurt will say?" asked Puck, and Finn felt a strange sensation of possessiveness. _About Kurt? _he wondered. He put his hands on Puck's shoulders. Puck leaned into them, and laughed. "I bet he's got some good stories about Puck. The fairy creature, I mean."

"I'm sure," Finn said, and dropped his hands. Puck turned to look at him in confusion as he crossed his arms and took a few steps away.

"What is it?" Puck said, irritated.

"It's... I'm not..." Finn shook his head, and blew out a breath through his nose. "I don't know. It's dumb. Just forget it."

"You... you can touch it, if you want," Puck offered, and Finn couldn't look away from those eyes. He was dizzy, suddenly hyper-aware of Puck's chest, his arms, how they were shaped differently than they'd been even a few months earlier, and he watched his hands reach out and cover Puck's bare scalp. Puck held very still, as he had earlier, while Finn's palms roved over his silky skin, feeling the catch of the occasional hair, but mostly it was marvelously soft and smooth.

"Finn," Puck said, and his voice had something in it, something he needed - something Finn wanted to give him, only he didn't know what it was. They took a simultaneous step together, moving forward, and their bodies bumped and Finn said, "Oh."

"You like it," Puck said, hanging onto Finn's eyes like a lifeline.

"I like it," Finn echoed. "I like it a lot."

They heard Kurt's voice say, "Finn? Noah?" and they took a step back from each other, but Finn thought he saw an expression of regret flit across Puck's face.

Kurt walked in with Sarah, holding hands, and both gasped. "It's Puck!" Sarah crowed, reaching forward to touch, as Finn had done, and Puck laughed before turning to Kurt.

"What do you think?"

"You're gorgeous," Kurt declared, and Finn closed his eyes.

* * *

><p>Carole stood at the sink in the kitchen, filling a glass with tap water and watching the kids out in the yard. Noah - <em>Puck<em>, Carole corrected herself, shaking her head at the name change and the new mohawk haircut - and Finn were tossing a football, talking loudly and loosely, while Kurt and Sarah sat back to back under the tree by the fence, a pair of earbuds snaking, shared, between them from Kurt's mp3 player. She noticed the way their hands were entwined; not for the first time, a little kernel of confusion settled in her stomach. There was so much she just didn't get about the way these kids were together.

"They're still good for each other." Burt was leaning in the doorway that led into the living room. "Even after all this time. I'm surprised, really. I thought maybe middle school would stop all of that." He nodded his head to the window, to the yard.

Carole tipped her glass to her lips and took a generous sip. "I don't think anything will stop that. There's some kind of force there, keeping them together." She paused for a moment, trying to put words to her confusion. "Do you ever worry that they're holding onto this friendship at the expense of other kids?"

Burt moved into the room then, and let his hand rest in the small of her back. He was warm, and she leaned back a little into the contact. "I try not to think about it."

Carole nodded to the yard, to Kurt and Sarah. "They're not . . . you know, are they?"

Burt laughed, a short sharp burst of breath and sound that Carole felt prickle her skin. "No. I highly doubt it. I think . . ."

"What?"

Burt sighed, swallowed. Carole held her glass out and Burt took a small sip. "I think Kurt might be gay." The words fell out in a rush, and it took Carole a couple of seconds to make her brain catch up.

"Oh. I hadn't really thought about that."

She looked at Burt's hand where it gripped the edge of the countertop. His voice was low, but the way he was talking made it clear that this wasn't the first time he'd thought these things about his son, but it may have been the first time he was speaking them aloud.

"Elizabeth always told me to just let him be, to love him and accept him for whoever he was and whatever he wanted. When he was three, he asked for a pair of sensible heels for his birthday." Burt shook his head and smiled at the memory, and Carole let her hand hover over his before she settled it square against his skin, let their fingers wrap together. "I worry about him. He just feels so much, and puts himself out there, and I don't even know if he really understands himself yet. I can't protect him all the time."

"I don't think you need to worry about that. They take care of each other." Carole looked closer at Kurt and Sarah, at the way they seemed to be holding each other up. She watched as Kurt leaned in, brushed Sarah's hair away from her ear, and said something that made her laugh even as she reached up and wiped at her cheek. _A tear_, Carole thought, and then realized that in all these years, she'd never seen Sarah cry.

Burt didn't notice, though. His attention was turned to where Puck and Finn were sitting, shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the patio, passing a bottle of water back and forth between them.

"What about that?" Burt's words were low in Carole's ear. She followed his gaze, taking in the way Finn seemed to relax _into_Puck. She thought about the way they were together, puppy-like with their still gangly limbs and lingering little-boy closeness. She hated to think about the day when they grew up from this friendship. She hated to think about her sweet, kind Finn being hurt. He and Puck were like brothers. But then she saw something that made her gasp; Finn, arm reaching out, tentative hand settling against Puck's back much the way that Burt's hand was snug against her own.

She stumbled over the sudden rush of realization coursing through her body. "_Oh_." She leaned her forehead onto Burt's shoulder. "I never . . . I didn't . . ." She sighed, heavy. "I never noticed before, but maybe..."

Burt pulled her closer, brushed a kiss atop her head as she whispered into his work shirt. "I think Finn might be gay, too."

* * *

><p>"Kurt?" Finn stood, silhouetted in the doorway, and waited for Kurt to stir in his bed before saying his name again.<p>

"Mmmm?"

"Can I come in?"

Kurt sat up on his elbows, pulling the covers back a little. "Of course, Finn. Is everything okay?"

Finn clambered up onto Kurt's pillow-top mattress and under the soft down of his duvet. He sighed and stretched luxuriously. "Your bed is always so much more comfortable than mine," he said, closing his eyes.

"I'm guessing that has something to do with the thread count on my sheets," Kurt said, grinning. He put a hand on Finn's chest, and Finn put a hand over his, pressing it to him. "What's going on?"

"I just feel really lucky to have you as a stepbrother, man," Finn said. "We've been friends for a long time, and... and it's the coolest thing, you know? To be right here, in your house."

"It's your house too, you know," Kurt said. "I wish... it could be all four of us. It'd be so much easier if Sas and Noh didn't have to go back to their house every night."

"Maybe someday we could all have a house together," Finn said, his eyes lighting up. "It'd be like our clubhouse, only a million times cooler."

Kurt stifled a giggle. "I somehow doubt we'd ever get anything done besides playing video games and making cookies."

"Well, not now we wouldn't. But later, when we're grownups, that would be awesome." Finn was quiet for a minute. "I wish we could jump ahead to that grownup part, sometimes. Middle school kind of sucks."

"What's wrong with it?" Kurt was surprised to hear Finn say that - Finn, the most ordinary, popular one of the four of them, who communicated with the rest of the student population with apparent ease. If _Finn_thought that school sucked, what did that mean for the rest of them?

"I don't know." Finn rolled over on his side, facing Kurt, and rested his head on one skinny arm. He sighed. "Everything's different now. You and Sas, I hardly have any classes with you guys. I just wish we could all be together, like we were before. And... Puck."

"Ah," said Kurt. "Yes. Puck."

"He just... changed. What's _that _supposed to mean?"

Kurt thought for a minute. "I think he needed a place to hide, inside himself."

"But why does he want to hide from _us?" _Finn sounded vaguely insulted. He picked at the edge of the covers until Kurt stilled his hand by twining their fingers together. "I liked Noah just fine, the way he was before."

"Yes, Finn, but did Noah like himself?"

Finn sighed again. "That's too much thinking for me," he complained, and Kurt smiled and tugged him closer, Finn's head resting on his chest. Finn was quiet for a moment, and then whispered into Kurt's pajama top. "Do you ever not like yourself?"

Kurt kind-of played with Finn's hair, where it curled a little at the nape of his neck. "Sometimes. But I think it's different than it was with Noah. Why?"

"I can't imagine you not liking yourself, Kurt." Finn's voice trembled a little, and Kurt realized Finn was crying, maybe had been crying this whole time. "That... it hurts, to think it. Because you're so amazing."

Kurt sighed. His chest was heavy. He didn't feel amazing a lot of the time. "I guess nobody feels good about themselves all the time," he hedged. He didn't know how to explain to Finn that he was usually just so _confused_. All the things the others loved about him were the things that were getting him laughed at in the halls, and he didn't understand completely why the same names that he'd been called all his life suddenly stung with a viciousness that left him breathless.

Finn sniffed, digging his face into Kurt's pajamas. "I just want you to know that _I _think it. Even if _you_don't think it sometimes."

And then Kurt felt Finn's lips touch his chin, a gentle imprint of his mouth against his skin. There was no expectation in the kiss, but Kurt didn't even question it, he just tipped his mouth down and connected with Finn's, simply, honestly.

Kurt had kind of expected a kiss like this to be tainted by what the kids at school called him. The names made him feel wrong, _dirty_, somehow, but kissing Finn didn't feel wrong at all. Kurt thought that maybe it was the most honest thing he'd ever done.

Finn didn't really pull away so much as he just slipped his head back into Kurt's chest. Kurt held him close. The weight of Finn's slender body on his was a greater comfort than he'd ever expected.

"I don't know what to say," Kurt said.

"You don't have to say anything," Finn whispered. "Just... don't change. Everything else is different. I need you to be the same."

"All right," said Kurt, though he wasn't exactly sure what Finn meant. The middle of the night didn't seem like the right time to question him about it.

"Can I stay here for a little while?"

"As long as you need," Kurt said, and Finn sighed, making a little nest for himself in Kurt's pillow. Kurt put his arm around Finn and they lay close together, as he'd often done with Sarah, and it kind of felt the same, only it kind of didn't.

Finn fell asleep in minutes, but Kurt's brain was spinning. He spent some time tossing and turning, but he really didn't want to wake Finn, so he got up and moved softly down the hall to the kitchen. Warm milk always helped him relax when his thoughts woke him up in the middle of the night.

To his surprise, his dad was already at the table with a glass of cold milk and a half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of him.

"Can't sleep?" Burt asked, quirking an eyebrow at his son. He nudged the chair across from him out from the table with his foot, and poured a second glass of milk for Kurt. "Have a seat."

Kurt sunk into the chair and rubbed at his eyes. Burt regarded him in silence for a few long moments.

"You know, your mother sometimes would get me up in the middle of the night with stuff she wanted to talk about," he said. "I'm pretty useless at night, but she always had something important to say. I learned to be a good listener." He leaned on his arms and looked at Kurt. "You look like you could use one right now."

"Yeah. I guess." Kurt leaned back in the chair and tried to puzzle out where to even start. He thought about what his English teacher told them when they wrote stories in class, to start at the beginning. It took him a minute to sort out that the beginning wasn't Finn, or the way the names made him feel now, but the fact that the kids were calling him names at all. "You remember how the kids used to pick on me, before Mom-"

"I remember," said Burt.

"It stopped, for a while. But they're doing it again. Calling me names, whispering and pointing in the halls. Laughing at me."

Burt rubbed his forehead with one hand and sighed, a heavy, frustrated sound. "You know you don't have to listen to anything those guys say, Kurt. That you're not - whatever they say."

Kurt shook his head slowly. "But what if I am? What if I'm exactly what they say?" He looked down at his hands, because he was scared and a little embarrassed, and he didn't want his dad to see that in his eyes.

Then Kurt found his hands warmed, covered by his father's strong ones, and they gripped them tight. "Kurt," he said, and his voice was firm. "You are exactly who you have always been. No names are going to change that. And nothing would change the way I feel about you. Don't ever forget that."

Kurt felt guilty that he couldn't be happy with how awesome his dad was being - to be happy with what he was getting, even if it wasn't quite right. He wished his dad would say, _I know they're right, I know that what they say is true, and that's okay. _He didn't know how to tell his dad he wanted warm milk instead of cold milk. So he just sat there and nodded, miserably, and drank his cold milk, and tried to be satisfied with that.

* * *

><p><span>Dallas, Texas: 8th Grade<span>

Jeremy Baxter had rankled at Dave since the first day of 8th grade. Granted, not much about Cornwell Middle School _didn't_ rankle Dave, but that came with the territory of _new city, new school, new rules._

And there were lots of rules in Dallas.

Dave had two strikes against him before he even walked in the door back in August: he was a Yankee, and he didn't play football. Or, at least, he hadn't played football until the counselor eyed him with an appraising glance, told him there was no hockey at school, and and had he thought about football because he looked like a born lineman. By the next afternoon, Dave was in pads on a sweltering football field, blocking and tackling like he'd indeed been born to it. He liked it more than he thought he would.

But Jeremy Baxter made it difficult. Sure, he got all kinds of respect even though he was only the second-string quarterback, and of course there were girls falling all over him. But what pissed Dave off more than anything else was the gentle way he moved and talked. It didn't make sense to Dave, how a kid like that could take hit after hit from guys like Dave and then waltz throught the locker room like they had been brushing him with feathers.

Jeremy Baxter had capital, and Dave needed some.

The second week of school, some of the guys were trash-talking after practice, and Dave wanted so badly to be _inside_of things for once that he didn't even think as he walked by Baxter's locker. Dave just took one look at his skinny, almost scrawny frame jutting out from under his too-big jersey and shoulder-checked him.

Dave wasn't sure, later, whether he liked the contact with Baxter or the satisfying thunk and clang of Baxter hitting his locker, but the spark of electricity in his body felt amazing, and that fuel was all Dave needed.

After that first time, it wasn't really about Jeremy Baxter at all. It was about Dave, and the way the electricity made him feel, awake and alive and more than a little powerful.

Dave had been the new kid enough to know how to turn things, to make it look like there was something going on between him and Baxter. It could have been anything: a girl, a game, who had the top grade in their shared advanced math class. The important part was selling it, selling that Baxter was an ass and Dave was the wronged one, no matter the scenario.

It was easy, really. A fake fight on the field after a blown call, a few mid-day locker slams, and a handful of whispered slurs, and by Halloween Dave was getting calls from girls for Friday night meetups at the Dairy Queen, and he had a crowd to sit with at lunch. He also felt like Baxter had a homing device in his backpack, because Dave couldn't stop. Couldn't stop seeking him out, staring him down, putting a little too much force into his pushes and shoves.

The last day before Thanksgiving break, Dave was in bad form. It was Lilly's birthday, and he'd been on edge all morning. He'd been so distracted that he'd bombed a math quiz, and just the way that Baxter brushed past him on the way out of class sent his vision to red. It didn't take long to catch up; Baxter wasn't that big. It didn't take much to send him flying, either, backpack skittering and books all over the hall. Dave just kept moving, stalking around the corner and into the locker room. His blood was still pounding in his ears when the door clattered open and Baxter was there, in his space and his face, just as flushed and seething as Dave was.

"What the hell, Dave? What's your damn problem?"

Dave was very suddenly aware of cold metal against his back and the really uncomfortable feeling of Baxter being way too close. He shrunk back into himself, which did nothing to lessen the feeling of being trapped. Baxter was yelling something, Dave wasn't sure what, and it took him a few seconds to get his hands up to protect himself. He planted both hands on Baxter's too skinny shoulders and _pushed_, and then he was alive again, railing nonsense about Baxter walking the halls like he fucking owned the school, and got all the girls, and looked down on stupid losers like Dave. He felt free for a handful of breaths, until he was turned again against another bank of lockers, and Baxter was back in his fucking space.

In his fucking face.

Kissing him.

Dave's world tilted half a degree, and he was overflowing with rage and indignation and something bigger than the electricity had ever been, and he was also alone. Because Baxter was gone, the door sucking closed behind him, and Dave was alone and crying on the locker room floor.


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three: High School

Sophomore Year

Dave had been the new kid enough times to know how things worked. _You either eat or get eaten. _Upperclassmen and established cliques were the sharks; freshman and new kids were shark bait. So Dave might have wanted to follow after the odd quartet moving down the hall in silence, their shoulders touching under the weight of overstuffed backpacks. But he watched and listened, from long practice, and everything that went on in that hallway screamed _stay away_. So he did. But that didn't mean that he forgot about them.

It didn't mean that they didn't notice him, either.

"That new guy," said Finn one day at lunch. He indicated Dave with his peanut-butter sandwich, sitting next to the other hockey players. "What's his name?"

"Dave," said Puck. "Dave something-ski. He's in Spanish with us."

Kurt eyed Dave surreptitiously, who didn't seem to notice he was being watched. "Hockey player?"

"Yeah, and he tried out for football," said Finn, stuffing the rest of the sandwich in his mouth. "He's good," he said, around the sandwich. "He's pretty fast for a big guy."

"Gross, Finn," Sarah said, grimacing and planting a hand in his face. "Say it, don't spray it." She leaned over the table and watched Dave finish eating his lunch. "He's alone," she added suddenly, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear.

"What do you mean, Sas?" said Finn. "He's right there with all the hockey players."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Like I said."

They didn't mention Dave Karofsky again for a while, but Kurt watched him after that, and he realized that lot of the time, when he was with a group, Dave was really alone. He kind of understood that feeling, even though Sarah and Puck and Finn were around too. Sometimes he felt like things with them were splitting, and he just needed to look inside to see what they were all made of.

The next time he heard the others bring up Dave, it was at the dinner table.

"God, I'm going to fail," Puck moaned, covering his face with his hands. "There's way too much I don't get, and even if Mrs. Miller lets me take all the tests as makeups, it's not going to make enough of a difference in my grade. I suck at math."

"What about a tutor?" Carole suggested, handing the casserole to Finn. "Is there anybody who's really good in math you could ask?"

"Dude, that new guy Dave, he's awesome in math," said Finn. "He's in calculus. Maybe he'd tutor you."

"That sounds like a nice idea, Finn," Carole said approvingly. "It would give him a chance to get to know you and your friends, too. I'm sure your dad would pay for it."

Sarah put the serving spoon back in with the beans with a _smack._"We don't need a fricking dime from him," she snapped.

There was an awkward silence. "Sarah," said Burt, but she stood up abruptly and pushed herself away from the table where they were eating.

Puck watched her go with an anxious expression Kurt hadn't seen on his face in years. "I don't think it would be a good idea for me to ask him, Mrs. Hudson," he said. "I've got some pool money left, and..."

Carole and Burt exchanged glances. "Save your money," Burt said. "Let me talk to him, Puck. There's a few things I've been wanting to bring up with your mom anyway."

* * *

><p>The man who answered the door was more ordinary than Burt would have expected. "Yeah?" he said, tipping his head to the side in an expression that was poignantly Sarah.<p>

"Danny Puckerman?" Burt gave an awkward little half-wave, seeing as how he was still on the other side of the screen door and couldn't exactly offer his hand to shake. "I'm Burt Hummel, Kurt's dad. Our kids are friends. I, uh, wanted to talk with you about some stuff that's come up recently. You got a few minutes?"

"Yeah." Danny pushed the screen door open and motioned for Burt to follow him into the kitchen. "You want a pop or something?" He gestured with a can of Sprite.

"I wouldn't say no to a beer," Burt said, eying the stash of Rolling Rock in the fridge.

"Help yourself." Danny backed away a little, let Burt help himself to a bottle, and leaned against the kitchen counter while Burt popped the lid and took a sip.

"So, uh..." Burt cast around for some way to begin the conversation that didn't have the word _prison_in it. "Our kids... they kind of found one another, back in third grade."

Danny ran a hand roughly over his face. "Look. I know things were hard for them, after . . . well. Let's just get it out there. I did some bad shit back then, I ain't gonna make excuses. I went away and my kids had to pick up those pieces. I regret that. But I've paid my dues. I'm trying to get on with things here."

"I can respect that, Danny - can I call you Danny?" He nodded. "I'm not here to dig up old bones. I just... well, I can see how it's affected these kids. Sarah and Noah - Puck - they've been part of our lives a long time. I care about them a lot, like they were my own kids. You can understand that?"

"Yeah. Thank you, for being there for them when I couldn't be. I tried- you know, letters and shit, but I never got anything. I don't know if they even got the letters I sent."

Burt tried, and failed, to imagine what life would have been if he'd suddenly been separated from Kurt for eight years. He shook his head. "I don't know about that. I know Ruth just needed some help, and me and Carole, we were happy to help. You've got two great kids, there." He took a breath, and went on. "They're also having a hard time, both of them. I'm really here to talk about that."

"A hard time with what, exactly?" Danny took a long drink from his Sprite, and set it on the counter behind him before looking Burt dead in the eyes. Burt could see where Sarah got her intensity.

"It's kind of funny, really, how they've kind of switched places." When he thought about Sarah, Burt still pictured the little spitfire with curly dark hair, not the silent, willowy ghost that so frequently inhabited his son's room these days. "Sarah used to be the tough one, the protector. Noah - he didn't talk much back then. Now it's Puck who's put on this tough front, and Sarah - well, she's pretty pissed at you."

Danny looked down at the floor and shook his head. "Ruth mentioned. They have every right to be mad at me. I was a royal fuckup, I admit it. I just don't even know how to be around them. What to do or say." He swallowed around his words, and Burt was surprised at the sadness that slid out in Danny's next words. "I just missed so much."

"But you're here now," Burt said, "and I don't think it's too late for you to get to know your kids. I really don't. I just don't know how much of this stuff going on with Sarah is about you and how much of it is... other stuff." He took a drink of his beer and considered how to describe it.

"What are you trying to tell me, Burt?"

"Well, I don't really know myself," he admitted. "Sarah and Kurt, they're close. Really close. With any other kids, I'd be breathing down their necks making sure they're not getting into trouble behind closed doors, if you know what I mean. But - see, Kurt, he's... well, he's gay." Burt stared Danny down, daring him to say anything at all about that.

"Huh. Well. I can see why you don't have to keep too close an eye. But you still think there might be something going on?"

"Maybe." Burt shrugged. "That's really not my worry about Sarah. She and Kurt, they'll figure that out on their own, or they won't, and I don't really mind it either way. But she's hurting, Danny, and it's not good. She needs help, and I don't think it's the kind of help kids can give each other."

Danny nodded. "Therapy. Yeah. Hell, I'm not going to knock it, man. I had to go. Part of my sentence. Anger management, and NA and all. I'm kind of surprised, now, that the social worker didn't make them all go after I got sent up. But yeah. If you think she needs help, I'll do what I can."

"Puck's upset, too, but I don't get that it's quite the same for him. He was anxious the other day - Carole suggested he get some tutoring in math, and he said he wasn't sure if he could ask you for money. Sarah kind of blew up about it."

Danny looked baffled. "You think he's afraid to ask me for money?"

"I think he's afraid what that would mean about him, if he did."

Danny's eyes slid downcast again. "He's ashamed of me, isn't he?"

Burt wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when he knocked on the door, but it hadn't been this broken-down, lost man in front of him. "I'm not sure. I think more than anything, he doesn't know how to have a father. He stopped expecting anything from you so long ago that asking you for help means more than he can handle right now."

"Well, that makes two of us," Danny admitted. "I wish I could say I knew how to be a father to him, to both of them, but pardon my French, I really have no fucking clue."

Burt laughed a short, harsh laugh. "My wife died that year, when the kids were in third grade. I swear, I've spent every day of the last eight years making it up as I went along. It gets easier." Burt remembered that long-ago night, he and Carole and Ruth in the school gym, Carole telling both of them that same thing.

"I wanted to say..." Danny hesitated. "I'm glad - even if my kids don't feel like they can come to me - they have you, and Carole. That's... well, it's easier to know they're in a good home, with good people."

"They're always welcome, always. You never have to worry about that. I just hope that all of you can work through some of this."

"Burt?" said Danny, opening the screen door for him.

"Yeah?"

"If Sarah's as angry as you say, maybe it's better if she doesn't know. You know, that I'm helping?" Danny sounded beaten, and more than a little like his heart was breaking.

"That's fine," Burt said, as kindly as he could, stepping onto the porch. "Thanks for the beer. I'm sure she'll come around," he added, though remembering the cold fire in Sarah's eyes when she talked about her dad, he wasn't sure at all.

* * *

><p>"Dude, it doesn't actually matter what you call them," said Dave, pointing at the equation with his pencil. "But on tests, they're gonna be called polynomials, so you have to know what those are."<p>

"I just can't remember this shit," Puck moaned, holding his head in his hands.

"Come on, it's not so bad." Dave leaned back in his chair. "You remember all kinds of football plays and stuff. You're not dumb, Puck."

"Football's easy. I have no problem remembering things like that. Even dance steps in Glee are simple."

"You like that Glee stuff?" Dave said, curiously. "It seems kind of..."

"Gay?" Puck said, grinning. Dave stiffened, but he didn't think Puck noticed.

"I was going to say lame," Dave said, softly.

Puck shrugged. "I used to think so. Finn and Kurt got involved and I thought it was pretty stupid for a little while, but then I did this Acafellas thing with Finn and Mr. Schue, and that was fun. And - well, the four of us, me and Sas and Finn and Kurt, we used to sing a lot together. I play guitar, and Finn plays drums, and Kurt, he can do everything. So it's not so different from that."

"You guys - you're pretty close," Dave said, hesitantly, watching Puck out of the corner of his eye.

"It's always been the four of us," Puck shrugged again, and that was all he said about it for a while. Dave didn't press him.

Later, Dave noticed the quiet presence lurking around the door frame while he was talking about the difference of squares. He felt her eyes on him before he saw her, and they didn't feel very friendly.

"So, yeah, whenever you see this, 'a squared' minus 'b squared,' you can factor it like this... and I think your sister is stalking me," Dave said. Puck sighed.

"Sas," he said loudly. "Dude. Either get us some hot chocolate or piss off."

"Already made," came a low, velvety voice from the kitchen. Dave felt an inexplicable shiver.

"Well, come on, then," Puck said, kicking a chair out across from Dave. "My brain's not going to absorb this without some sugar."

Dave felt the curtain of her curly brown hair brush his shoulder as she leaned over him, setting down a tray of mugs and a carafe of steaming liquid. He smelled patchouli and something else he couldn't put his finger on. She had six earrings in her left ear and one of them was stretched out wide, a big gaping hole in her lobe. It fascinated him and repelled him at the same time.

"Didn't that hurt?" he said, pointing at her earlobe.

"Fuck, yeah," she said, and grinned. He grinned back before he could think.

Puck snatched the biggest mug and poured himself some chocolate. "Thanks, Sas."

She slid into the chair in front of Dave without any noise. "Watch out," she said, in that same intense, low voice. "It bites."

He poured himself a glass, and regarded her torn black lace shirt and green fingerless gloves with amusement. "What bites?" he said, taking a sip. Then he spent the next two minutes choking and spluttering on the unexpected spice in his throat.

"Ah," he said, when he could talk again. "That."

"Yes," she said, and her eyes were smiling even though her mouth was not. "Puck likes it like that."

"You just like to shock people," Puck said, kicking her under the table. She kicked him back, and they linked hands. Dave felt suddenly that he was in the presence of something he couldn't quite understand. It felt almost too intimate for him to watch, and he turned his eyes away, his throat prickling with... something. Envy?

She nudged a scone at him. "Here," she said. "Spread some cream on this. It'll cut the chili and cinnamon."

Puck wiped the foam off his lips and sighed contentedly. "Okay. I think I'm ready to tackle those polynumerals."

"Polynomials," Dave and Sarah said together, and she snorted a laugh as she pushed back from the table. He didn't watch her leave, but he was kind of disappointed to see her go.

"She's a trip," he said to Puck.

"That's the first time I've seen her smile in weeks," Puck said. "I think she likes you."

"That was a smile?"

"Dude, don't get me started," Puck said, and Dave sensed a deeper story, one that went beyond the boundaries of math tutee to tutor, so he dropped it. They dug in for one last burst of effort.

As Dave was heading out the door, he saw Sarah stretched out on the couch in front of the television, absorbed in the latest episode of CSI. "You a Grissom fan?" he heard her ask, and her eyes never left the television.

"Who isn't?" he said solemnly.

"C'mon." She made room on the couch next to her. "It's just starting. This episode's going to be good."

"Yeah?" He set his bag down next to the couch and sat at the end, a comfortable space between them. "How can you tell?"

"I have a sixth sense for these things."

"Oh yeah?"

"No, dickhead." She rolled her eyes. "I read the review. Shut up and watch."


	4. Chapter 4

Junior Year - November

Kurt was surprised to find the back door unlocked when he got home from school. He was on the verge of calling the police when he tripped over Sarah's canvas Army surplus backpack, flung onto the floor next to the refrigerator. He called out to her.

"Sas! Where are you?" The only reply was the heavy backbeat of music echoing down the stairs from his room. He took the stairs two at a time, flung open his bedroom door, and was confronted with Sarah sitting in the middle of his floor. Her long black skirt was rucked up around her thighs, exposing holey black tights above her combat boots. Her upper body was swallowed by one of Finn's old hoodies. She was meticulously attacking the paper contents of an old shoebox with a pair of scissors, tears pouring down her face.

Kurt knew Sarah had been struggling. He'd been watching it happen so slowly that he wasn't even sure what was really going on. For so long she had been the strong center of their collective universe, making sure the boys were all okay, even though things had been harder since last spring, since Mr. Puckerman came home. But he hadn't known quite how bad it had gotten for her, until just then.

He crossed the room and sat next to her, stilling her hands with his own. He slid the scissors from her grasp and tucked them under his thigh.

"What're you doing?"

She nudged at the edge of the box with the toe of her boot. "These are all the letters my asshole father sent from prison," she bit out.

"Why are you cutting them?"

"So I don't-" She stopped for a moment, shook her head. "Ma and Noah don't know about them. I couldn't let them see them. He hurt us all so much, I couldn't do that to them. And now he's back, and if I'm going to pretend like I don't know what letters he's talking about, I have to get rid of them. I _have_ to, Kurt."

"I know, baby. I know. Here . . ." Kurt took the box, and piled the unshredded letters back inside. From the looks of the confetti on his carpet, she had only gotten through one letter. At least, he only saw the remnants of a single stamp. He had the perfect spot for the box; it took a minute of digging in his hope chest, and then he slid the box into a corner at the bottom, next to his silver slippers and a little jar of the perfume that smelled like his mom. He covered the whole lot with his baby blanket, and then gathered the bits of paper that were left and buried them in his bathroom trash.

He returned to Sarah, who had sat silently through the whole process, took her hand in his and rubbed soothing circles on her palm with his thumb. He softened his voice; he wasn't used to Sarah being vulnerable like this. "Why were you _really_ cutting the letters?"

"I told you."

"You told me something. You didn't tell me the truth."

Kurt watched as she looked away and twisted her hands in her lap. "You said you were cutting the letters so you didn't do something else. Sas."

She wouldn't look at him. He was patient. He waited while she shifted next to him in silence. Finally, _finally_, she spoke. "I cut the letters so I wouldn't do this." She stripped Finn's hoodie off and over her head, and lifted the hem of her black tank top, showing him the shallow cuts that snaked their way across the taught skin of her abdomen. Some were a few days old, but most were older still, mostly healed.

"Oh, Sas." He let his hand rest there, feeling the smooth spots where the skin was pink and healing and the rougher edges where the newer cuts were scabbed over. "Baby, why?"

She looked at him then, her face crumpled and her eyes angry. The utter lack of anything but coldness in her voice scared Kurt, mostly because he'd never heard her like that.

"Because I can't fucking _breathe_, K. I feel like I'm burning inside, or dying."

"And hurting yourself helps?"

"No. Nothing helps. It just makes it _less than_ for a little while."

Kurt was scared, knew he was crossing into dangerous territory here. He knew that the very right thing to do would be to involve his dad, or Carole, or even Finn and Puck, but Sarah had always taken care of him. Now it was his turn to take care of her. He pulled her into his arms and rocked her, smoothing her hair and whispering nothing into her ear. It took a few minutes, but her tears stopped and her body relaxed. When she pulled away from him, her eyes were bright and challenging.

"Help me."

"With what?"

She twirled a finger around the end of one of her curls. "I want to cut my hair."

"Okay." He could do that. He wasn't bad with hair; he'd shaved Noah's mohawk enough times over the years. "How short?"

"Shave it. All of it."

"I don't . . . God, Sas, are you sure?"

She stood up and moved to his window. It was already getting dark out. She wrapped her arms around herself and sighed. "I'm sure. I told you, K. I _can't breathe._ Something has to change. Maybe it's me."

"Fine. Let me go get Dad's clippers."

He took the scissors and left them on the kitchen counter on his way into the master bath. Even in the new house, his dad's barely-used clippers were in the bottom drawer under the sink. He took them up to his room, stopping at the recycling basket for some newspaper and at the linen closet for a couple of towels on his way. Sarah was already in the bathroom, stripped down to her sports bra. She watched silently as he spread the newspaper on the floor and one of the towels around her shoulders. She sat on the edge of the bathtub and leaned forward as Kurt plugged the clippers in.

"Do you want any fuzz at all?"

"No. I want it gone. All of it."

"Okay." Kurt sighed, and flipped the guard to the same setting they always used for Puck. He switched the clippers on, and let the vibration numb his arm for a minute. "I'll ask you one last time. Are you sure?"

Her eyes were hollow, but they fixed on him clearly. "Dammit, Kurt, if you won't help me I'll do it myself."

He took that as a yes.

Kurt smoothed the hair at the base of Sarah's neck, and touched the clippers there. He hesitated for a brief second before moving his hand forward. Sarah's curls fell with a plop onto the newspaper. With every pass of the clippers, Kurt followed the path with the flat of his hand, like he was soothing away every rough spot in Sarah's soul. It was different, the feeling of all of it, than it ever had been with Puck. Kurt knew why, of course. Puck had been creating himself. Sarah was cutting herself apart.

***

Finn found Puck sitting in the dusk on the edge of the fountain, which had been shut off years ago. Now it was just a repository for broken beer bottles, cigarette butts and other detritus of the crumbling Lima landscape. He hunched over himself, looking ten again in the midst of their childhood playground.

"Kurt's going to stay with her," Finn said, hesitating to get any closer. "She really needed you."

"Thanks, asshole," Puck said, without rancor. "Kurt can have her. I'm done for now."

"You're her brother, dude," he said. "Why do _you_ think she did it?"

The words seemed to come from a place of disgust inside Puck, pouring out onto the scarred, damaged ground. "Because she hates herself. Because she hates my dad. Because it's always been hate with Sas, even when we were eight and she was talking for both of us. Because... I couldn't, and she had to do it. She had to be the one to hate for us. I only knew how to be afraid."

He lifted a hand to his eyes, and as Finn watched him wipe his face, something broke inside him. He found tears in his own eyes - he, who almost never cried. He mostly hadn't had a reason to need to. He'd been happy to be the solid one, the dependable one. It was strange that he didn't feel particularly solid right now, like he was starting to come apart and he didn't know what to hold on to.

"So it's all that hate, turning inside," Puck continued, speaking in that dull monotone that Finn couldn't stand. He wanted to shake it out of Puck, but he didn't feel like he could get any closer to him.

"Do you ever feel like cutting, like that?" Finn asked, afraid of the answer, but Puck shook his head.

"No, dude. I just want to throw things."

Finn laughed, and Puck's shoulders came down a little.

"How about you?" Puck asked, and Finn looked at him sharply, surprised.

"No way, man," he said. "I don't want to hurt anybody. Especially myself."

"You're the protector, Finn," Puck said, and Finn could hear him grinning. "The white knight."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't protect Sas, could I?" Finn crossed to the old tree and put the flat of his hand on its smooth trunk, on top of all the carvings that had been left there over the years. He found the heart Sarah had carved for the four of them, and traced it with his finger. It was a piece of their past, and probably would be there long after they were all gone from Lima. The thought was a little creepy, but mostly comforting.

"Do you remember when she drew those pictures on our arms?" Puck asked, finally turning toward Finn. His eyes were dry and red, and he watched Finn steadily. "In third grade. She said they were magic."

"Sure," said Finn. "Mine helped, I think. I got the drum set, anyway."

Puck wrapped his arms around himself, shivering a little in the fall night air. "Sometimes I wish she could do that again, now," he said. "Things are so hard now. I need - I wish we could..."

"What?" Finn followed the slight movements of Puck's body with his eyes. He'd always found Puck's compact form compelling, even back when he was Noah, but things had changed between them, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He just knew Puck's voice had the same longing, the same urgent need for - something - that Finn felt, himself.

"We're not allowed to touch each other anymore," Puck said, quickly, as though he were forcing the words out. "The four of us. Sarah never wants to hold my hand at school these days, and you and Kurt - it's just not allowed. The only time we get to touch each other is in football, and sometimes in Glee." He took a shuddering breath. "It fucking sucks."

"Yeah," said Finn, and now he moved in to sit by Puck, letting his knee brush against him, and he draped an arm around Puck's back. Finn's limbs had gotten super-long and awkward in the last two years, and he seldom knew what to do with his hands anymore, but on Puck's back, they felt just right. "I know what you mean."

He sensed all the remaining tension leak out of Puck and drain into the empty fountain, to be replaced by a wholly new sort of tension, the kind with which Finn was becoming all-too familiar. It was centered in his stomach, just below his navel, and he could feel the accompanying hardness in his pants. If it had been anybody other than Puck, he would have been embarrassed, but - how could he possibly be embarrassed by Puck?

Finn felt a touch on his leg, just above his knee, and he looked down in surprise to see Puck's hand there, palm up, strong and tanned. He put his hand down on top of Puck's, and their fingers laced, as they'd done a million times before.

"Except now it's different," Puck said. His voice was soft. "Isn't it?"

"How?" said Finn, feeling the catch in his throat, and he swallowed. "How is it different?"

"You know," said Puck, and moved his hand a little, brushing Finn's leg. "Don't you?"

Puck was the one who always had a date on Friday night. Finn mostly stayed home. There had been that thing with Quinn, but it hadn't lasted, and she'd mostly wanted to walk around with him at heel, like a trained spaniel. Finn didn't want to bother with that. And Rachel, he really loved her, but she seemed to want something from him that he couldn't give. He wanted - he wanted -

"I'm not sure," said Finn. "I'm a little freaked out by it." He peeked at Puck's eyes, which were staring at the moon, and Puck looked over at him at the exact same time. Puck grinned, laughing nervously.

"But," Finn added. "I want it. I... I think I always have."

"Yeah," said Puck. He tugged Finn's clasped hand toward him, let it fall to his side, so Finn was leaning on his arm over him, supporting his weight on top of Puck, on the broken cement of the fountain. "I just... it would change things for us. For the four of us. I don't want Sas and Kurt to feel left out, you know?"

"Do you think they would?" Finn hadn't thought of that, but then, he hadn't done a lot of thinking about any of this, had left it to his subconscious to ponder, and steadfastly ignored it when it appeared in his afternoon fantasies and early morning wet dreams. Now, though, suddenly, it was here, right in his face, looming large and bright like a constellation he hadn't been able to make out until just now. Now it was obvious. Now there was no way he'd ever be able to ignore it again.

He hesitated, still leaning over Puck, and shifted his weight. "What do you want?" he asked.

Puck looked up at him, and deliberately leaned upward, into Finn, to meld his body against Finn's, touching all the points that were closest: his chest, his stomach, his arms and shoulders and - "Puck," Finn gasped.

"I want to touch you," Puck said, and wrapped his arms around Finn, bucking his hips forward, and it felt so much better than anything Finn had ever felt before that he couldn't believe it.

Finn let the weight of his body come down on Puck, doing the pressing for him, and it was so good, so intense, and Puck was making these encouraging noises like _c'mon _and _that's it _and _so hot_ and - he came in his pants, just like that.

"Shit, Puck, I'm sorry, man," he jabbered, holding up his hands, because _now_ he felt embarrassed, now his face was flaming red, and he scrambled backward on the edge of the fountain, still feeling the aftershocks of their contact. "That was -"

"That was fucking hot, man," Puck said, astonished, and smiling. Finn just sat down where he was and watched him with incredulous unease, while Puck circled him like a panther.

"It's a problem," Finn said. "I'm - I arrive too fast."

Puck laughed, shaking his head. "Dude," he said. "I've been waiting for this for fucking _years._ If you were any slower, I'd have to call it glacial." He touched Finn, touched his pants, right on the spot where he'd made a mess, and squeezed, and Finn felt dizzy because he could feel himself respond, already, immediately. He stammered something appreciative, but it didn't make sense, even to him.

Then something Puck had said filtered through to his brain, and he took Puck's hand off him, held it tight in his own. "You were waiting?" Finn asked, somewhat awed. "For what?"

"I don't know," Puck said, looking at their joined hands. "The right time. I was always scared of everything. Scared to hurt, scared to be hurt. Scared of how much I wanted things. And then, when I became Puck - he kind of gathered up all that scared, and made it into this." He gestured to himself, and Finn looked at him again, his solid chest, his big arms, his square jaw. Finn touched that jaw, and Puck closed his eyes, his breathing loud in the darkness of the October night.

"You've been Puck a long time." Finn realized, with a startling burst of joy, that he could touch Puck, and Puck would appreciate it, would enjoy it. Wanted it. Wanted _him._ He ran his hand down to Puck's chest, along his side under his arm, across his shoulders, feeling the freedom of it, and it was breathtaking. "You're not scared anymore. So why were you waiting then?"

"I guess I was a little scared," Puck admitted. "Not of you. But maybe - of what you might think of me, for wanting it."

"I think..." Finn paused, thinking, for so long that Puck made an impatient noise and picked up Finn's hand, placing it back on his jaw. Finn laughed, and then he took Puck's face in both hands and kissed him. Puck was an awesome kisser. It was nothing like anything he'd felt before, except - he realized with a shock - that kiss he'd had with Kurt, all those years ago.

"You think what?" Puck said, amused and breathless, when they pulled apart.

"I think I love you," Finn said, and they both sat there, surprised and staring at each other, for a long moment - until Puck kissed him again.

***

Kurt waited in the dark of his room until he heard Puck's voice retreat behind Finn's door. Then he crawled around Sarah's sleeping form and moved slowly into the hall. Finn was waiting for him in the dim part of the hall that was illuminated by the bathroom nightlight.

"She okay?" Finn leaned against the wall, his head back and his eyes closed. He sounded exhausted.

"No." Kurt couldn't hide the combination of stress and fear and sadness in his voice. "How did we miss this, Finn? All of us?"

"It's Sas. She's never been the vulnerable one. I don't think it's so much that we missed anything, I think she just hid it so well that we couldn't see it."

"She didn't want us to see it." Kurt thought that maybe that's what hurt the most; they'd been trusting her to hold them up and make them whole for so long, and when she needed them to hold her up she just hid herself away.

"How's Puck?"

"Pissed off. A little betrayed." Finn's voice shook. "Um. Something happened. We - Puck and I - "

"I know, Finn," said Kurt, gently. "We all saw it coming."

Finn's face was bright red, but he nodded. "I guess I did too," he said. "Bad timing, maybe."

"Don't say that," Kurt said. "It's not a bad thing. You guys, you deserve a little happiness."

Finn smiled gratefully at Kurt. Then he sighed. "He's not dealing with this - with Sarah - so well, though."

"He wants to walk away, doesn't he?" Kurt wasn't surprised when Finn looked at him, wide-eyed.

"How did you-?"

Kurt waved his hand in the air. "Please. Underneath it all, this is _Noah_ we're talking about. He doesn't do stuff like this. Not well. Not without wanting to hide." He paused, looked Finn square in his eyes. "You have to promise me, Finn. You won't let him hide from this."

Finn held his gaze and nodded slowly. "I'll do my best."

"It'll kill her if he walks away. _Please_." God, what a mess. Kurt hated begging, but this wasn't for him.

Finn sighed and let his head rest against the wall again. "Okay. Okay. I can- _shit_. I can do that."

"Good." Kurt turned to go back into his room, and was surprised when Finn grabbed him into a fierce hug. He was even more surprised when his arms found their way around Finn's torso. He clung tight for a moment; there was something desperate to Finn's embrace, like he was seeking comfort of his own. When Finn pulled away, his cheeks were damp. He swiped at them and ran an awkward hand through his hair.

"I'm sorry, man. I don't- I mean . . ."

"No worries, brother of mine." Kurt held tight to Finn's wrist for a moment. "Really. We're allowed to hug in our own hallway." He rolled his eyes, which yielded the desired result, a choked half-laugh from Finn. "Go. Take care of Puck."

"Yeah. Take care of Sarah."

Kurt waited until Finn had slipped back into his room before he returned to Sarah.

She was wrapped in Kurt's blankets, a solid lump in the darkness. Kurt thought she was asleep, but when he crawled into bed next to her she rolled over and rested her head on his shoulder.

"Puck is pissed at me, isn't he?" She sounded so terribly young, and afraid in a way Kurt always associated with Noah.

"Kind of. I think . . ." Kurt toyed with the edge of the blanket and sighed. "I think maybe he's a little upset with himself, too, though."

"Why?"

There were no right words, so Kurt figured he'd go with brutal honesty. "For the same reason I'm pissed at myself. Because I didn't know. Since your dad came back, I haven't been sure if I'm seeing you right at all. God, Sarah!"

Kurt got up and crossed the room to the window. It was late; even the porch lights were off at most of the houses. He let his voice fill with that he hoped was caring and concern rather than anger and hurt. "Do you even know? I love you like you're part of me, and I don't know how to help you. You've gotten so far away from me that I don't recognize you."

Her hand was soft on his shoulder, and she rested her cheek against his back, between his shoulders. Her breath was warm through the cotton of his t-shirt.

"I don't recognize me, either. Sometimes it's easier this way."

"It shouldn't have to be." _It shouldn't have to be easy, or hard, or anything really other than just plain awful, _but Kurt suddenly didn't know how to say that, either. Instead, he led her back to his bed and climbed in next to her. He spooned her, her back snug against his chest. She clasped his hand in hers and kissed his palm. The unabashed intimacy of it startled him, and he pulled his hand away.

"I love you, Kurt."

"I love you, too, Sas."

She rolled to face him, and before he quite knew what was happening, Sarah was kissing him.

He hadn't really kissed anyone before, unless he counted Finn back in middle school, but his body seemed to know what to do. Even though his brain was screaming _no_ and _gay_ and _she's like your sister_, he still kissed her back. It was sad and needy with a hint of longing underneath, and Kurt wouldn't have been lying about the shivers it sent down his spine. He finally pulled away gently, and wiped at the tears on Sarah's cheeks.

"I can't, Sas."

"Please." She sounded so lost.

"No. Not when you're hurting like this." _What the hell? Not at all. Never. No._

Her eyes got dark and angry. "I'm always hurting like this, K. Please."

"I can't." He got up and pulled at the throw at the bottom of the bed. "I'm _gay,_ Sarah. I can't do this. I'm going to go sleep on the couch."

He felt hollow as he closed the door on her pleadings.

*****

Carole entered the house quietly even though a light glowed warmly in the living room . She wondered, as she slipped out of her clogs by the back door and set her purse on the kitchen counter, whether Burt had waited up or just left the light for her. She peered around the doorway into the living room and was shocked to see Kurt huddled on the couch under that soft throw he kept on his bed.

"Hey, honey. You okay?"

When he looked at her, she knew he'd been crying. He shook his head.

"Want to talk about it?"

"Please?" He shifted to lean against the arm of the sofa, and she sat next to him.

"What's up?"

"I need you to go up and check on Sarah. She's in my room, and I couldn't stay in there. But she shouldn't be alone."

"Do you want to tell me why?" Carole knew the kids were pretty private about their personal stuff; she and Burt had learned not to push. She was pretty sure that she didn't even know half of what was really going on, but they really did take care of each other.

"I can't." Kurt looked suddenly defensive, like he thought he really needed to but didn't want her to know that. At her questioning look, he loosened up a little. "It's not that I don't want to, because I think I should, but it's not my story to tell. Just- I'm worried, and I had to come down here because I was making things worse."

"Okay." Carole ran a tired hand through her hair. "Maybe I can help. Are you okay, though?"

Kurt shook his head, and laughed bitterly. His honesty sometimes shocked her. "No. And I don't know if I will be. But Sarah needs someone more than I do right now."

Carole was halfway up the stairs when Kurt's voice reached her.

"Carole?"

"Yeah, honey?"

"Tell Sarah that I said she's like a butterfly too."

But when Carole knocked gently and waited outside Kurt's door for Sarah to invite her in, there was no answer. By the time she gave in to her anxiety and pushed the door open, uninvited, the bed was already cold.

"Kurt!" she called, low and frantic, and he was there in five seconds, gripping the door frame and spitting curses worse than she'd ever heard from his mouth.

Carole felt dizzy. "Where would she go?" she said, sinking down to the edge of the bed.

Kurt shook his head. "Maybe the park, but other than that? I don't know."

Carole was already moving. "I'll drive."

Kurt grabbed at her hand as she moved past him in the doorway. "Wait." His voice was heavy with fatigue. "We need to wake the others." He nodded to Finn's closed door.

"You take care of that. I'll get your dad. We can cover more ground with more cars anyway."

Puck was awake in seconds following Kurt's abrupt entrance, and the words, "Sarah's gone," were enough to rouse both boys from the bed and send them stumbling into their jeans and t-shirts.

"Did she leave anything - a note, a clue, _anything?"_ Finn's tone was desperate, but he looked like he was going to have to be the strong one as Puck clutched at his arm for support. Kurt shook his head.

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," he mumbled. "She was just so lost - I should have stayed with her, no matter what she was trying - I should have stayed."

Carole took his hand and squeezed it tight. "Kurt, you did all you could. I know you always want what's best for Sarah, no matter what it costs you. She left because she wanted to, not because you chased her away."

"Kurt," said Burt, kneeling before his son. "She's hurting. We're going to find her, and then we'll get to the bottom of this."

But the haunted look in Kurt's eyes told Carole that it wasn't going to be as simple as that, that after tonight, it might never be simple again.

_*****_

Dave liked walking downtown at night. Lima was the first place he and his dad had lived where it was actually safe to do it, and it was as much a habit anymore as blocking a tackle or brushing his teeth. It was also the most benign of his secrets.

Over the last year, Dave had learned the rhythms of downtown: when each convenience store closed, which block to avoid after Last Call, and where to hide from the patrolling police cars. He'd had a close call, barely missed ducking into a darkened doorway as the first car after the shift change rolled around the corner. He supposed he was lucky, in the right place or whatever, or maybe he was just looking up the street at the right angle to see a shadow cross under a half-bright street light.

He knew that shadow. Knew those hunched shoulders, knew that if he were close enough he'd see fire and defiance and something wounded behind hazel eyes.

He took off running, because that shadow didn't know these streets like he did.

Dave wasn't the best runner. He was brute force on the football field, and no matter what anyone claimed, skating was _nothing_ like running a full-out sprint. But the shadow - _Sarah - _was moving slowly, so it didn't take him long to catch up to her.

"Get your fucking hands off me!" she snapped, glaring at him, stumbling away and pulling her grey hoodie closer around her face. Her eyes were little more than indigo bruises in a fish-white face. "Karofsky - what are you doing here?"

"You need to be careful out here. Cops and shit. It's after curfew," he hissed in her ear. "I like to walk. So?"

"Trust me, I'm an expert at not getting noticed," she retorted. "You, on the other hand, stand out like a hippo in a goldfish bowl. Leave me the fuck alone."

"Haven't gotten caught in three years. And I'm sure as shit not going to let it happen now." He tugged on the sleeve of her hoodie and pulled her further into the darkness. "I don't know what your deal is, but I know a good place to be invisible."

Her expression was hungry, but she tried to play it cool, and Dave didn't push her. "Whatever," she muttered. "Beats trying to blend in down here with all the poseurs and jock douchebags. Present company excepted," she added.

"Generous of you. C'mon." He took off at a brisk walk. "We have about forty minutes before the next patrol car comes through."

Sarah shadowed him through the darkened streets, mostly empty at this time of night on a weekday. They were just a few blocks from the grounds of McKinley High School when he drew up in a quiet empty lot, in the shadow of the abandoned textile mill. Sarah was panting a little, but she'd kept up, and Dave knew she'd never admit to being tired or scared or anything else even a little bit weak. She was just that stubborn.

"Sit your ass down." Dave waited until she plunked herself down on the curb before pulling a half-drunk bottle of water from his backpack and handing it over. She downed the remnants and crumpled the plastic halfway before dropping in the gutter at her feet. She glowered up at him, so he sat next to her. He was half pissed off, and better than half curious. "Are you going to tell me what's going on, or am I going to have to play 20 Questions?"

Dave knew his irritation was equally matched by Sarah's stubbornness, but it wasn't more than another thirty seconds before Sarah provided part of the answer by snatching the grey hood off her head. He gasped at her shorn scalp. "What the hell...?"

"It was... in my way," she said, and it sounded like a piss-poor excuse to him, but he nodded, trying to make her realize he was going to actually listen. She ran a tentative hand over the space above her neck, and she hesitated a moment before forging on. "Did you ever feel like your own body had betrayed you somehow?"

Dave closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed. He was pretty sure it sounded about as sad as it felt. "Yeah." As much as he wanted to get away without revealing anything more, he was basically forcing Sarah to talk so he figured he'd better man up. "That's part of why I like walking." He let the rest go unsaid, but he wasn't surprised that Sarah knew anyway.

"I don't sleep, either. Not anymore."

"Since your dad?" Dave had heard the rumors, of course, about the kinds of things that used to happen in the Puckerman house, and he knew that Mr. Puckerman had returned to Lima last spring. He imagined what it would feel like if his mom came back after all these years; changed or the same, it didn't matter. What would he do if actually had to face the memories, instead of pretending that he had everything under control?

"Yeah."

"I get it." He'd heard people tell him that very thing so many times, in meeting rooms and more kinds of group therapy than he'd ever admit to, that he almost choked on the words as they tumbled out of his mouth. She stood and turned away from him, but he couldn't let her do that. He jumped to his feet and grabbed her arm, turning her to face him.

She sneered at him, hate and anger washing out of her eyes. "Sure you do." _S_he raised her voice to a mocking whine. "Poor kids, fatherless for so long and now their daddy's back. Whatever. Nobody cares that he almost killed our mom, or that he kept drugs in the house. Nobody cared when he went away. They all just pointed and whispered like we were bad kids because he was bad. I'm fucking sick of it."

Dave got right up in her face. "What else are you sick of?" He was challenging her; he only hoped he wasn't pushing too hard. He needed to hear her confession, needed it almost as desperately as he needed to offer his own, to the one person in this damn town who might get it.

"Everyone needs me for something, but none of them even saw me." She gestured to her clothes, her bare scalp. When she laughed, it was pained. "None of them saw this. It's like I'm invisible. I'm fucking shouting, and nobody can hear me."

Dave knew, suddenly, like a brilliant flash, what was hiding under her clothes and attitude, and maybe he hated Sarah for a brief minute for doing what he couldn't.

"Where are they?"

"What?"

"Where. Are. They?" He pushed the sleeve of her sweatshirt up her arm. "Not on your forearm. Where? Here?" He let his hand brush her thigh through her jeans, and she just stood there, stiff. "No? What about here?" He gripped her upper arm. Nothing. His heart was pounding in his chest. "Jesus, Sarah. Where are your fucking scars?"

She backed away three steps, pupils blown wide. She didn't say anything, just lifted her shirt and bared her stomach. The oldest ones were pink, the newer ones heading there. Nothing newer than three or four days. Dave nodded at her, and bent over. Lifted the hem of his jeans and pushed the cuff of his sock down. Showed off the pale white lines around his ankle.

"Why?" She whispered into the emptiness, even though there was nobody around to hear them.

"Why not? Mom's an alcoholic, long gone. Dad's kind of in denial. We move every few years, which blows. You and me? Your friends? We all kind of got dealt shit, you know? Coping is hard. There were times I didn't cope so well."

"But you don't... anymore."

"No. Not since last year. I want to." Dave bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. He could almost taste the adrenaline of release he used to feel. "Christ. I want to right fucking _now_." He watched her hand drift to her jeans pocket, and he almost asked if she had a razor before he was able to shake the thought out of his head. "Do the others know?"

Sarah nodded at him. "They're varying degrees of hurt, pissed off, and confused. And lost, I think, because I can't tell them what I need."

"What do you need?"

"Help," she whispered. "I can't hold them all up on my own. Not anymore."

Dave thought about the way they had always been, Sarah as the center of the group and the three boys circling sort of inelegantly around her. He was taking a risk; they barely knew each other. But he moved into her space and pulled her close. Under her sweat and fear, he could smell the patchouli, and that same other smell, the one he couldn't place. He half felt like he was making it up, but he said it anyway.

"Maybe it's time to let them take care of themselves now."

"Who's going to take care of me?" Her voice was small, lost in the dark.

Dave took a breath, rested his cheek against the stubble on Sarah's head. Sighed, and spoke. Against his better judgement. "I will."

***

"One more sweep around the block, Dad," said Kurt, leaning over the dashboard and searching the dark with bruised, hollow eyes.

"Kurt, it's time for us to stop," Burt said quietly, and turned the other way, toward home.

"I can't give up on her," he snapped, and Burt sighed.

"You're not giving up. None of us are any good to anyone like this. You're exhausted. How would it serve Sarah if you made yourself sick, or if we crashed the Navigator into a tree?"

It could have easily become a fight between the two of them, but the conversation was cut short when they pulled into their driveway and found another, unfamiliar car there, waiting for them. "Do you know this kid?" Burt asked, indicating the idling sedan.

"It's Dave Karofsky," said Kurt, with curiosity, and a bit of wonder, as he scrambled out of his father's car to open up the door to Dave's car. He looked across the empty passenger seat at Dave, waiting, just waiting.

"She's asleep in the back," Dave said. "I didn't want to make her sit up."

"How'd you get her to sleep?" Kurt whispered, but Dave just shook his head.

"Be glad your dad's in the phone book, Hummel," he said. "Or we'd have ended up at the hospital, and they would've found the scars."

"You knew not to take her back to her house." Kurt's voice was louder now, hoarse, almost unfamiliar. Dave nodded.

"She said this was her home."

Kurt leaned heavily on the seat, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears that spilled over, and he took several shuddering breaths before warding Dave off with a waving hand. "I'm okay. Just - help me get her into the house. Please."

Dave didn't need any help lifting her, seemed to have no trouble picking her up just with his arms. He followed Kurt into the living room and down the hall to Kurt's room, not questioning, just silently laying her in the single bed. Then he watched from the hallway as Kurt covered her with a blanket before kissing her cheek, and closed the door behind him.

Kurt's bravado had collapsed around him, and he was barely holding onto consciousness, but he had enough presence of mind to ask Dave, "Did she say anything I should know about?"

"She said a lot of shit, Kurt," he said, without anger. "I'm guessing you know most of it. But I'm - I said I would help."

"You?" Kurt said, looking up at Dave, baffled. "Why?"

Dave rubbed tired eyes. "Because I recognized some of that shit. It sucks to carry it around alone."

"She's not alone," Kurt said, defensively, staring him down. "She's got us three."

Dave shrugged. He wasn't fighting back, but he didn't look away, either. "So what's one more?"

"I'm too tired to talk about this now," Kurt said, and Dave nodded. They walked together to the front door.

"Dave -" Kurt said, suddenly clutching his arm. They both looked at where his hand was touching. "Thanks. You - you might have saved her life."

"She's not alive yet," Dave said, low and weary. "We'll work on that tomorrow. Tell her I'll be by after school."


	5. Chapter 5

The morning came far too soon for Kurt, and he spent more than a few minutes dreading getting up for school, but eventually his dad saved him with the words, "Why don't you join me at the garage today, Kurt?" That suited him fine. It meant he didn't have to think about what he was wearing or how he might appear to others. He could be invisible in the garage coveralls and lose himself in replacing tires and changing oil all day.

Burt's face was drawn and quiet in the car on the way to the garage, but he didn't press Kurt to talk. That was one of the things Kurt liked best about his dad. He trusted Kurt would talk when he was ready, and it meant that he almost always _did_talk to him, eventually. He just wasn't exactly sure what to say this time.

Even after a big cup of coffee, Kurt was muddled and clumsy by late morning. When he'd dropped the same wrench three times, his dad pressed a hand between his shoulders and told him to go take a nap in the office. But when Kurt crossed from the garage into the waiting area, Dave Karofsky was standing there with a bag from Jimmy John's.

"Hey," he said, holding up the bag. "I thought you might need something to take your mind off things. You hungry?"

"Surprisingly, yes. Thank you. Let me-" Kurt gestured to his coverall and his grease-smudged hands.

"Take your time. Lunch will hold." Dave's expression was tentatively friendly, but Kurt knew the shadows lurking behind his eyes mirrored those in Kurt's own. They had a lot to discuss.

Kurt retreated to the office, where he scrubbed his hands under the hottest water he could coax from the aging faucet. Then he turned the water to cold and splashed some on his face. God, he was so tired. He stripped out of his coverall and hung it on the back of the door before shrugging into his jacket.

"I don't think I've ever seen you in a t-shirt before, Hummel," Dave said, nudging him as they walked out the door to the rusty picnic table in the grass by the garage. He unpacked the sandwiches and passed one across the table to Kurt. "I hope you don't mind turkey."

"Turkey's fine. Thank you, for the sandwiches. And for last night." Kurt looked hard into Dave's eyes, trying to tell him without struggling for words just _how much_his actions meant.

Dave's gaze didn't waver from Kurt's, but he didn't say anything either, just took a bite of his sandwich, watching Kurt pick the tomatoes out of his and leave them on the paper. "Hey..." Dave said at last.

"Yes?" Kurt said.

"... Can I have those?" Dave said, indicating Kurt's tomatoes.

Kurt pushed them across the table to him without a word. He watched Dave pick up the messy slices and tuck them into his mouth, licking his fingers afterwards.

"Is Sarah still sleeping?" Dave asked.

"She was when my dad and I left. Carole stayed home with her."

Dave nodded. "She your stepmother?"

Kurt thought about how to answer that. "Yeah. I guess. I mean, she and my dad never got married. But she and Finn have lived with us since the summer before 7th grade. So yeah, she's my stepmother, and Finn's my brother." Kurt paused, and tilted his head. "But Finn's been my brother since long before he and Carole moved in."

"That's cool," Dave said. "I always wanted a brother. My mom - well, she and my sister took off when I was a kid. I barely knew her. It's just me and my dad, now."

"You move around a lot, huh?"

"Yeah. Every couple of years, usually. Middle school sucked, though. 6th grade in Chicago, 7th grade in Charlotte, and 8th grade in Dallas. I fucking hate moving."

"Sounds pretty lonely," Kurt said, swallowing a bite of turkey. He watched Dave carefully, trying to learn his body language, not sure if he could trust the signals he thought he was reading.

Dave didn't answer. He looked away and swallowed, clenched and released his hands on the metal table. When he finally looked back, Kurt could tell that he'd struck a nerve.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I didn't mean-"

"It's okay. It's just a little funny, that's all."

"What is?"

"If I weren't lonely, I wouldn't have been out last night. I wouldn't have found Sarah. We wouldn't be sitting here. So I guess something good finally came out of my crappy situation." He laughed, softly, but it was tinged with bitterness.

"Us sitting here together is good?" Kurt knew he was tired, but he was having trouble following.

"I dunno. Maybe?" Dave popped the last end crust of his bread into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, his eyes on the table. "There's a lot going on here. I'm not sure of much right now."

Kurt started balling up the paper wrappers and stuffing them into the bag. He looked at Dave, who was rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Do you want to go over to the park? We can talk?"

Dave hesitated, and his eyes strayed down the street. "You think Sarah's okay?"

Kurt felt a pang of something like jealousy. "She's home with Carole... maybe she'll even talk to her if I leave them alone for a while." He realized he didn't _want_to stop talking to Dave. It had been such a long time since he'd had a conversation about something important with anyone other than his three friends. He was relieved when Dave nodded, and they walked across the street together.

They clambered down the side of the hill to the walking track that circumscribed Schoonover Lake, carefully avoiding the piles of goose poop and urban debris. "Sarah loves this place," Kurt said. He pointed at the little peninsula jutting out from the shore, with the defunct fountain. "We spent a lot of time there as kids, playing and talking."

They wandered down the sidewalk toward the peninsula. "You guys have been friends a long time," Dave said. It wasn't a question, but Kurt nodded.

"We kind of fell together in elementary school. Third grade was a hard year." There were times when he still had trouble talking about his mom, and that awful year.

"Sarah told me a little bit." At Kurt's shocked stare, Dave threw his hands up. "Just her story, I promise! She said that the rest wasn't hers to tell."

"Yeah. That was the deal we made, way back." Kurt breathed a little easier. He felt bad for even thinking that Sarah would say anything about the rest of them. "We were family together, the four of us. We still are. Kind of." He felt the soft grass by the path with the toe of his shoe as they crossed the bridge to the fountain. "Things are changing. It's hard to hang on to the way it was."

"Change isn't always bad, Kurt." Dave's gaze was piercing; Kurt felt exposed under his scrutiny. He wondered what Dave saw when he looked at him like that. "What are you scared of, if things change?"

Dave never looked away, waited patiently for Kurt to gather his thoughts. "What makes you think I'm scared?" said Kurt at last.

Dave laughed, and it was an astonishing sound in the face of Kurt's exhaustion and bleak confusion. It almost made him smile for a moment. "Fuck, Kurt. Everybody's scared. Everybody."

Kurt had to move. He couldn't shake the nerves crawling under his skin. He crossed the grass to the edge of the broken-down fountain, leaned against the cement edge, and waited for Dave to join him. He looked down at his feet. "I'm scared that I'm not going to be able to save Sarah. Not this time."

"Why do you need to save her?"

Kurt felt like the breath was being pressed out of him. It was hard to answer Dave's probing questions because none of what was going on was solely about him, or about Sarah. It was about all of them, and Kurt felt like he didn't even know how to be separate from them anymore. "Because when we were eight years old, she saved me."

Dave stood for a long moment more, considering him, but when he sat next to Kurt, it was almost as though he'd moved even further away from him. Kurt felt the strange distance between them, and he was suddenly anxious. "How's this time different from the way it was then?" Dave asked, and his voice was soft. "How is it different?"

"She needs something from me... something I don't think I can give her," Kurt said, and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.

"She kissed you." It wasn't a question, either.

Kurt knew he should feel betrayed, but he was intrigued. Something about Dave had made Sarah feel safe, made her feel like she could talk freely with him. Made her feel safe enough to fall asleep in the back seat of his car. Kurt couldn't hate her for any of that. With a blinding flash of hope, he wondered if maybe he could feel that way, too. "Yes."

"So what's wrong with that? You love her, right?"

"Always. But she's like my sister, and I-"

Dave was waiting, implacable. "You what?"

Kurt barked in frustration. "Like you don't know. C'mon, Dave. _Everyone_knows. I'm gay."

"And what about Sarah?" It was like Dave hadn't heard him. "What is she?"

Huh. Kurt honestly hadn't thought about it. He'd never really had to have a coming out talk with Sarah. With any of them, really. He'd just assumed she was straight. "I think she's straight." It was the best he could do.

"Hmm," Dave said, and his lip curved upward in a little smile. Kurt watched that lip curve, and felt a shiver.

_Oh._

Kurt kept a determined eye trained on that corner of Dave's lip, and took a courageous step forward. "What about you?"

"I think she's straight, too," he said. His lip quirked again.

"I wasn't asking about that." _Dammit. Dave was going to make him ask, point blank. _"Are you . . .?" Kurt raised an eyebrow in question.

"Am I what, Kurt?" Dave's eyes sparkled just a little bit in the sunlight.

"Are you gay?" God. It felt wrong, asking.

Dave looked at his hands, clasped in his lap. "Would _it's complicated_be an acceptable response?"

Kurt felt that rush of nervous energy return, doubly strong. He closed his eyes and took a shaky breath. "I guess if it's an honest one, it's acceptable to me."

"Good." Kurt was startled to feel Dave's hand cover his own. His touch was electric. Dave just held his gaze and squeezed gently, and Kurt relaxed into the contact. It had been years since anyone other than Finn, Noah, Sarah and his parents had touched him.

"I take it it's not so complicated for you, then?" said Dave.

Kurt thought of a similar conversation he'd had with Finn, and he had to smile. "I never thought it was, but... god. I'm not even sure of that anymore." He shook his head and blew out a dissatisfied breath. Dave squeezed his hand again, and Kurt turned his smile on him, grateful for the contact. Dave's fingers were warm and reassuring.

"That's pretty good, I'd say," Dave said. "Everything in the fucking world is confusing. If you don't have questions about everything, I don't think you're looking hard enough. But... you've always known about you, huh?"

""For as long as I understood, I suppose," he said. It was strange to be having this conversation at all, he thought. It was stranger still to be holding hands with Dave Karofsky. But Kurt couldn't bring himself to question it much further than that. It was just... what it was. "I'm attracted to guys. It's always been that way - I didn't know what it was, at first, but once that became clear, I knew."

"I guess it was the opposite for me," Dave said. "Once I figured out I was attracted to guys, I _stopped _knowing what was what, and that's when it started being complicated."

"Change isn't always bad, Dave," Kurt teased, and he was rewarded with a surprised laugh from Dave.

"No, I - it was pretty fucking clear that whatever it was I'd done with girls, before, wasn't really going to measure up. But I never loved any of _them_, so... I don't know."

He shifted a little on the concrete of the fountain, and Kurt dropped his hand, watching him. After a minute, Dave looked back, and offered his hand again, a question in his face. Kurt took it, flushing a little, and Dave smiled, relaxing.

Kurt watched the breeze rustle the leaves on the catalpa tree. "I never thought - it would be so complicated to love someone. I spent my childhood loving my mother, and when she... died, I was so lonely, until Finn and Noah and Sarah dragged me into their circle. And then I just... loved them. No questions, for a long time. They had pieces of my heart, and I had theirs, and that felt just right." He picked his way through the explanation, feeling a little like he was betraying their secrets by sharing this, the most intimate part of their relationship, with a stranger.

But then he saw Dave's face, listening, and he thought, _He's not a stranger, he's Sarah's friend. Maybe my friend. _He owed it to Dave to help him understand. "Sarah - she was like a part of me. I say she's like my sister, but it's more like she's the other half of my soul. God. That sounds crazy to say it out loud like that, but..." He shrugged, helplessly.

"We love people the truest when we love the nature of their selves," said Dave, and Kurt peered at him, perplexed.

"Who said that?" Kurt asked.

"I can't remember," said Dave vaguely. "So what about Puck? He's Sarah's twin, right? Aren't they supposed to be, like, parts of each other or whatever?"

"Puck," Kurt said, and stopped. His throat felt tight, and he swallowed a few times to clear it. "Puck always seemed to see things the rest of us couldn't. It was scary to him, though. He spent a lot of time being afraid. He barely said anything until middle school - did you know that?"

"Do you think it was because..." He looked sober. "Was it his dad?"

"A lot of it," Kurt said. "A lot. It got easier and easier once he was gone. But he... he's back now. And I don't really think they know what to do about that. Puck and Sarah - they just started spending a lot more time at our house."

"She sleeps in your bed," Dave said.

"Yeah," Kurt said, feeling defensive, "but we've always done that. I mean, sometimes Finn - um." He coughed, wondering how much it was okay to say, and eyed Dave speculatively. "It's just part of who we are, together."

"I got that," Dave said. "I'm just saying, maybe the kiss, maybe that could be part of who you are together, too."

He started to say _But I'm gay,_ but he realized it didn't need to be said again, not to someone who had said _it's complicated_to him. "She's confused enough right now," he said, shaking his head. "I don't think I need to make it it more confusing by letting her kiss me."

"Even if it felt good?" Dave's mouth parted, and a tiny flicker of his tongue crossed his upper lip. Kurt had no idea what it meant that he apparently couldn't take his eyes off Dave's mouth. It was a little more than he could take just then.

"Yeah," Kurt breathed. Dave's startled eyes took that in, and in the time it took for him to lean forward and make contact with Kurt's lips, Kurt had time to think, _Oh my god, he's going to kiss me, and I'm going to let him._ It was a little more than _let_, in the end, and he found himself pressing forward into Dave's parted mouth. Only when he made a tiny, surprised squeak did Dave pull back. He looked somewhat surprised at himself.

"Did that feel good?" Dave asked, low.

"Of course," Kurt said, when he could speak again. "You're a guy."

"Thanks for noticing," said Dave, grinning, and Kurt laughed, shaking his head.

"No, I mean... Dave. You're here for Sarah. What - what are we doing? What is this?" He flipped a wrist back and forth between the two of them. "Are you trying to make a point, or what?"

"I'm trying to ask if it was any good, Kurt," he said again.

Kurt watched Dave's lips make the shape of the word _Kurt._It made him catch his breath a little, and he found himself saying, "Yes, it felt good."

"But different from when Sarah kissed you," he said.

Kurt bowed his head and ran a hand, the hand that wasn't holding Dave's, over his face. "I guess. Can we stop talking about this?"

"Sure," agreed Dave. "When you explain how it was different."

"Isn't it different for you?" Kurt pleaded, but Dave wasn't budging. Kurt sighed, looked at Dave's warm brown eyes and thought, _Sarah's eyes, _and there was Dave's faint smile, and _Sarah's smile is like that, _and it went back and forth like that until he felt even more confused.

"I have no idea," he said, feeling a little panicky. "I just know it's different."

"Okay, Kurt," Dave said. He reached out and pulled Kurt into a hug. It was an undemanding hug, with no strings attached, and yet Kurt felt himself stir, and respond, and before he knew what was happening he was kissing Dave again, with both his hands in his hair.

"Different," Kurt gasped. "It's - different." Then he lept to his feet and took three big steps, just needing to get away, to not be there where he was.

"Fuck," said Dave, shocked. "Kurt, hang on. It's okay."

"I know," said Kurt. He was breathing hard, and he put a hand on his chest, and tears prickled in his eyes. "What I feel - Sarah, she's -" He took a deeper breath, a slower one, and forced his shoulders to drop, to relax. "God."

"What is it?" Dave said. He'd followed Kurt, but wasn't touching him. Kurt looked up at him and shook his head, incredulous.

"I know what Sarah felt now, when she kissed me." He laughed, and looked at Dave, who stood there, patient, waiting to understand. "It _is_ different, kissing you. But kissing her - it's not bad. I think I get it now." _I see what Sarah saw, in Dave,_ he thought. _I feel - different. And it's not scary at all._

"Can we go see if Sarah's awake now?" Kurt said, and took Dave's hand. "I think she needs us both."

* * *

><p>Sarah was a little disoriented when she woke, late, to sun streaming across her back. She'd been cold and shaky when she'd crawled into the back seat of Dave Karofsky's car, and she had a vague memory of strong arms and a warm body and hushed voices, but she wasn't completely sure where she was or how she'd gotten there.<p>

An experimental lift of a single eyelid told her that she was tucked into Kurt's bed. That was good. Kurt's house was safe. Home.

Sarah swallowed around a knot of sudden anxiety in her throat and rolled over, stretching into the sunlight. The house was quiet. It took a few minutes for her brain to engage. It was Friday. She was supposed to be in school, but she seemed to be alone.

She got up, remade Kurt's bed, and rummaged around in Kurt's dresser for something other than yesterday's clothes to wear. She settled, finally, on a pair of flannel sleep pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, and when she was dressed she padded down to the living room.

She wasn't alone.

Carole was tucked into one of the overstuffed armchairs, a ball of purple yarn in her lap and knitting needles sporting an inch or so of stitches in her hands.

"What are you making?" Sarah's voice sounded worn and scratchy to her ears. She didn't want to think about what she looked like.

Carole looked at her with a faint smile. "I'm knitting you a hat. You'll need it to keep warm."

"Oh. Thanks. Where is everyone?"

"Burt's at the garage with Kurt, and Puck and Finn are at school. You needed the rest. Puck told me he doesn't think you've been sleeping much."

_At all,_Sarah thought, but she didn't say so. "Thank you."

Carole leveled her with a stare. "I also thought that maybe if it were just us, you'd want to talk. If you tell me to back off, I will. But the boys all looked ruined this morning, and I'm guessing it has to do with more than your new haircut or your late-night vanishing act."

"It does."

"Will you tell me about it?"

Sarah moved off the bottom step and into the other armchair across from Carole. "I don't know where to start, or if I can."

"That's okay. We have all day." Carole looked over at her, gentle concern visible in her eyes, and her hands never stopped moving.

Sarah watched Carole's hands, took in the swiftness of the motion and the smooth, practiced way the yarn moved through her fingers. She wanted to say that she was lonely and scared and angry and hurt, but other words tumbled out instead. "Will you teach me?"

Carole settled her project in her lap and took a good look at Sarah. Sarah just focused her eyes on the yarn and needles, and whispered yearningly at Carole. "Please."

* * *

><p>Carole had learned from a neighbor in those first hard weeks when she was pregnant with Finn and Christopher was deployed. She'd knitted an awful acrylic scarf, and a chunky blue crib blanket and then set everything aside because she'd gotten tired with pregnancy and busy with other things. Then Finn was born, and bare months later Christopher was gone and Carole was alone with a baby and no idea how to get through it. When she'd finally stopped crying at the drop of a hat, and learned how to manage the dishes and the house and working and the sheer volume of laundry a baby produced on a daily basis, she was suddenly left with empty nighttime hours that needed filling. All she knew how to knit were square, flat things, so she bought a pound of pale yellow yarn at Wal-Mart and knitted a baby blanket that she donated to the hospital nursery. Another pound of blue yarn, another baby blanket. She figured she got pretty good bang for her buck because the yarn was cheap and she was slow; it took her better than a month of stolen minutes to finish a blanket. It wasn't perfect, but it got her through. Over time, she got better. Learned how to make round things, so she bought less yarn and made baby hats. She stopped, from time to time, but always went back to her needles and yarn when she was stressed or anxious or missing Christopher.<p>

She put it all away when she met Burt, but found it again that summer afternoon when she realized that Finn was probably gay. Now she just did it because it calmed her mind after a busy day of work, and she liked the women she'd met at the yarn shop downtown. Now it was a hobby, but once knitting was a lifeline. Maybe it could be that for Sarah, too.

Maybe it could help; at this point it certainly couldn't hurt.

"Okay. Come with me." She led Sarah up the hall to the tiny room that was too small for anything other than storage, really. Stacked in a corner were three clear 5-gallon plastic tubs, and an old Mason jar full of knitting needles. Carole sorted through them until she found a matching pair of size 15's, and then pulled out the middle tub. She knew what she was looking for, two skeins of cranberry-colored chunky alpaca she'd bought on sale last summer. The color would look great on Sarah, and the yarn was deliciously soft. It was also already wound, so she'd be able to set it right into Sarah's hands without a lot of fumbling.

Instead of going back to the living room, she went up the hall to the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea while Sarah settled in at the table, her right hand absently patting the yarn.

"It's soft," she whispered, scratchy-voiced and wondering.

"It's alpaca. It better be!" After all those years of Wal-Mart yarn, Carole had been shocked to discover herself turning into something of a yarn snob. Money was just a little snug rather than suffocatingly tight these days, and she bought on sale, but she still saved her extra pennies for the delicious softness of alpaca or merino, or a blend with a bare hint of cashmere. "Here, let me get you set up." Carole took the needles and one ball of the yarn and cast on 10 stitches. Then she arranged the needles in Sarah's hands and walked her through a row of knit stitches, showing her the best way to manage both the needles and wrapping her yarn without dropping the needles out of her work. She was surprised at the way Sarah took to it, hardly second-guessing herself about how to work her stitches.

"You're a natural," she said with pride, and a little pat on Sarah's shoulder. She was almost shocked to see a genuine smile tug at the corners of Sarah's mouth.

"My Nana? Way back, before my dad . . . " Carole nodded for Sarah to continue, which she did. "I used to love to watch her. She taught me, or tried to, when I was really little. It was hard, then. I think I made a scarf for my Barbie, but that was it."

"No matter. Your hands remember what to do. It's muscle memory, or so they say."

"Huh."

Carole waited, and watched, from her spot next to the stove. When Sarah was a couple of rows in, hands moving slowly, Carole set a mug of tea in front of her and sat down at the table with her own project. They worked in silence for a long time. Carole knew that if Sarah was going to talk, it had to be on her own terms. Finally, when there were a good five inches of stitches on Sarah's needles, she set them down on the table and sipped at her tea. Then she looked up at Carole.

"I kissed Kurt. Last night." Her confession was tinged with apology.

Carole was oddly unsurprised. Burt's insistence to the contrary, Carole had always suspected that there was some, albeit slight, undercurrent of attraction running underneath everything else Kurt and Sarah shared. She blinked once, and offered Sarah a light smile.

"I'm guessing that was a little awkward, for both of you."

Sarah nodded. "I think I really confused Kurt." She picked up her needles and worked half a row. "I kind of confused myself, too."

"You've been so close for so long, it's only natural to feel things for each other, and to be confused." Carole felt oddly sad for this change in things between Sarah and Kurt; they had always been slightly innocent, sweet with each other, more like siblings than anything. "It must be hard, though. Is that why you took off?"

Sarah shook her head. "No. Not entirely. That was a part of it. But it was like, I just didn't know how to be _me_anymore, you know?"

Carole thought back to her own teen years, to the way she felt on those days when her skin was too tight on her body or her brain was too busy to focus. She had been lucky, though, weathering the hard days with a gaggle of girlfriends and parents who were slightly clueless but at least present. She couldn't begin to imagine what the bad days must feel like for Sarah.

"I have a vague idea. But honey?" Carole was a little shocked to see tears in Sarah's eyes at the endearment. "Running wasn't the answer."

"I know." God, she sounded so young. "I just . . . I was afraid."

"Of what?"

"Everything's different. My dad is back, and I hate him." She shook her head, and tried again. "I hate who he _was_, and I'm so afraid of the way he was when we were kids that I don't know how to know him _now._I can't let him hurt us again. But what if he's not like that anymore? I'm not sure I can deal with that, either."

"What else?"

Sarah finished her row and turned her work, continued talking as she fumbled to start a new row. "I can't lose Kurt. _ I can't_. But what if kissing him changed everything?"

Carole just smiled and reached across the table, letting her hand rest on Sarah's forearm. "I think you startled him, maybe gave him some things of his own to think about, but he'll be okay. The two of you will be okay."

Sarah just looked at Carole sadly. "I hope you're right. But . . . "

"But what?"

Sarah wrapped her arms around her torso, and Carole watched in surprise as fat tears rolled down Sarah's cheeks and plopped onto the tablecloth. Carole got up and ran a dishtowel under some cool water before passing it to Sarah, who wiped her cheeks wordlessly. "I c-can't- I d-don't-"

Carole crouched next to Sarah's chair, more worried now than when she'd opened Kurt's door to find his room empty. "What's the matter, baby?"

"I just hurt. So much. All the time." She sounded lost, more troubled than Carole had realized. "I needed to make it stop."

"Is that why you shaved your head?" Carole knew there was something on the edge, something she couldn't quite see clearly, but every word was getting her closer.

"No. Yes. I mean, partly. But there's more." Sarah just hugged herself more tightly, and then Carole _knew_.

"Where?"

Sarah looked at her with sad, empty eyes and lifted her t-shirt. "I think I need some help," she said, as Carole took in the scars on her abdomen.

Carole nodded. "Who else knows? Besides Kurt, I mean." Because there was no doubt in her mind that Kurt knew.

"Karofsky. And Finn." Sarah's voice dropped off to a whisper. "And Puck. He's really upset with me. I think . . . I don't know if he can forgive me."

"He will. He just needs time." Carole had a whole series of questions she wanted and needed to ask, but she was interrupted by the slow snick of the front door as it opened, and she knew by the rustling in the hall that it was Kurt.

"Carole? Sarah?" His voice was soft, but held an edge of nervousness.

"In the kitchen, honey." He tumbled into the room, very un-Kurt-like, pulling Dave into the room behind him. They were both slightly flushed, mostly from the cold, Carole was sure, but there was also something newly comfortable about the way they stood together. She watched Kurt's eyes flick back and forth from her to Sarah, to the knitting needles and yarn in front of Sarah. She watched Sarah's eyes boring into Kurt, sliding over to Dave, and back to Kurt. She was pleased to see, for the second time that day, the barest hint of a genuine smile tug at the corner of Sarah's mouth.

"That's how things are, are they?" Sarah's voice was dry, lightly teasing.

"No!" Kurt and Dave fell over each other in denial, and Carole almost believed them. Maybe there wasn't anything there yet, but she knew Kurt. There would be, and soon.

Kurt dropped Dave's hand and crossed to stand behind Sarah. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "How are you, baby?"

She gestured to her knitting. "Carole's teaching me. And . . . I told her."

Dave spoke up, from where he was still hulking in the doorway. "About the cutting?" At Sarah's nod, he went on. "Good." He held Carole's gaze for a long moment. "She needs help. There are . . there's a group, at the community center. It's pretty good, but . . ."

"But what?" Kurt moved back to Dave, rested a hand on his arm.

"But she needs more than a bunch of kids and a social worker. Or at least," he shook his head in an unexpectedly shy gesture, "I needed more than that."

Carole just sat in her chair, running her fingers over the slightly raised and twisted pattern stitch she was working. She watched and waited while Kurt put together the pieces she had already snapped into place.

"You . . ." Kurt looked at Dave, his eyes wide and worried.

Dave nodded. "It was a long time ago. And," he leveled his gaze at Sarah, "I don't do it anymore. But I still go to the group, because it helps."

Kurt sighed, and leaned into Dave, just a touch of his shoulder to Dave's side, but Carole felt something shift in their energy then. She almost didn't hear Kurt's whisper into the open folds of Dave's letter jacket. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

Dave's light smile was soft, and sad. "You kind of have a lot on your plate right now? And really, we hardly know each other." He glanced at Sarah. "It's not something I talk about."

"Except with me," said Sarah. Carole felt as though she'd become invisible; Sarah only had eyes for Dave.

A faint blush crept over Dave's cheeks. "Yeah," he said. "Apparently."

"Why?" Kurt said, his face perplexed. "I mean... why Sarah?" He rounded his shoulder as he leaned into Dave. "Why me?"

"Last night, Sarah needed me." Dave closed his eyes, and he reached for Kurt's hand at the same time Kurt reached for his, their fingers intertwined.

"What do _you _need, Dave?" Kurt whispered.

When Dave opened his eyes again, for a fleeting moment Carole saw heat, and pain, and bitter envy, before the mask dropped back over him, and Dave was calm and cool once more.

"He needs a place where he doesn't have to be anything but himself," Sarah said, in her low, intense voice. "Nothing but imperfect, searching Dave."

"Jesus," he said, running a hand over the back of his neck. "Where the fuck am I supposed to find that?"

Kurt and Sarah locked their eyes then, in the way Carole had been watching them do for so long. They had whole conversations in seconds, had been since they were kids. It still amazed her. She watched Kurt squeeze Dave's hand, waited in the silent moment while Sarah slipped out of her chair and buried herself into the shallow angle of their bodies.

"Here," Sarah said, her voice muffled by Dave's chest. "Right here. You can be one of us now. You don't have to run anymore."

Carole kept on, working her needles and pretending that she didn't see the tears trailing down Dave's cheeks.


	6. Chapter 6

Junior Year - February

Kurt's was the only car in the driveway when Burt got home. He couldn't remember what was going on with the others, except that Carole was working 12's all week and wouldn't be home until after 8. He hadn't even gotten the door open when he was bombarded with the wonderful smell of beef stew simmering on the stove. Kurt was at the kitchen table, laptop open and books and papers scattered around him. He looked up at the motion of the door, and smiled.

"Hey, Dad." He started moving to corral his notes, and Burt waved him off.

"Don't rush. I need to wash up and change. What's the occasion?" He nodded to the stove.

"I got home right after school, and I felt like cooking."

"Where's everyone else?" Kurt just stared at him; Burt felt kind of silly, but between Carole's work schedule, and all of the teenagers who were in and out of the house like it had a revolving door, it was too much work to keep track.

Kurt sighed as he packed up his History book. "Finn and Puck have a late practice. Dave and Sarah have their teen group at the community center, and then they're going for dinner. It's just you and me."

"Good. It's been a while since we've had dinner together, just the two of us." Burt ruffled Kurt's hair lightly as he passed by the table.

"I'll have the table ready when you're done." Burt could hear something in Kurt's voice that gave him pause, but he didn't stop to ask. Beef stew was a talking kind of dinner; he'd find out soon enough.

They sat down to dinner a little before six, and ate in silence for a few minutes until Burt lifted his eyes from his bowl and looked at Kurt. "How are things going with . . .?" He gestured toward the upstairs, what Kurt and Dave jokingly referred to as the teenager's lair.

"Okay." Kurt scooped up a chunk of carrot and chewed thoughtfully.

"Sarah seems to be settling down." Kurt knew why his dad was asking now. It wasn't common for them to have time alone, just the two of them, anymore.

"She's getting better. Slowly." Kurt didn't want to share too much; he knew they were lucky. Carole had helped get Sarah set up with a therapist, and his dad was being awesome letting Sarah stay with them, but the adults were staying remarkably hands-off long-term.

"And you and her?" Burt's eyes lifted in question.

"What about us?" Kurt wanted to deflect the question, but he didn't think his dad would let him get away with it.

"Things are going well, the two of you?"

"There is no _two of us_. She's my best friend." But Kurt thought about that kiss, and the occasional shiver that ran down his spine when Sarah snuggled up against him in sleep. He felt a slight blush creep up his neck, and knew from the heat there that his ears were pink.

"It's normal to be confused, Kurt. I mean, I know we covered the whole gay thing ages ago, but it's okay if you need to rethink it." Burt was calm, like he'd been planning this talk for a long time.

"Dad." Kurt dropped his spoon into his bowl and shook his head. "It's not like that."

"What _is_it like?" Burt turned his attention back to his dinner, which gave Kurt a moment to settle his thoughts.

"There's Dave. And Sarah. And . . . it's complicated." His dad just looked at him.

"Are Sarah and Dave . . . ?"

"No." At least not in the way that his dad was thinking. His dad looked surprised.

"Oh. I kind of thought that maybe they were . . . I mean, if the two of you weren't . . ." Now it was Burt's turn to blush.

"It's complicated. Can we just leave it there for now?"

"Sure. But Kurt?" Burt's eyes were gentle, open. At Kurt's nod, he continued. "You can always talk to me, remember."

"I know." Kurt poked at a chunk of beef with his spoon. He suddenly wasn't hungry anymore. "May I be excused?"

"Yeah. Go on." His dad waved him away, tugging the sports section out of the folded up newspaper on the edge of the counter.

Kurt set his bowl in the sink, and moved quickly up to his room. He didn't want to think about much of anything except the monster History paper he had due on Friday, but he couldn't get away from the flood of thoughts and emotions that were his constant companions these days. All of it was tinged with conflict.

There was the electricity in the air whenever he and Dave touched. There were the frankly sexual dreams, inspired by the way Sarah curled closer to him in sleep at night. There was the lightness he felt navigating the halls at school, Sarah still a little small and sad on one side of him, Dave enigmatic and strong on the other.

Then there was the way _he _felt, like something really good was just out of his reach, if only he could figure out what he was reaching for.

He turned the _Rent _soundtrack up, loud, and buried himself in his paper. _When in doubt, ignore it all._

He was two pages in, and singing along to "Light my Candle" when a soft knock on his door got his attention. He turned the volume down on his speakers. "Come in."

"Hey." Dave looked tired.

"Hey, you." Kurt couldn't help it. He smiled at Dave and slid over so that there was room on the bed for Dave to sit. "How'd things go?"

Dave shed his coat and dropped it in the corner before joining Kurt on the bed. "It was good. Hard, for both of us tonight. But necessary, I think."

"That's good." Kurt never pried about what went on in their group, but he liked to get a kind of temperature reading from Dave. It made the nights afterward go so much easier. "Where's Sarah?"

"She's down talking with Carole. She'll be up soon." Dave looked at his hands. "Look, Kurt."

"Yeah?" Kurt looked up at the seriousness in Dave's voice.

"I think she might really need you tonight. To listen, if she wants to talk. Just . . . be here for her, okay?" Dave's voice was soft, tinged with fatigue.

"Will do. What about you? Are you okay?" There was something sad behind Dave's eyes tonight that hadn't been there when they'd parted ways after school.

"Honestly? No." Dave rubbed his eyes. "I will be, though. I'm just all jumbled right now." He motioned at his head. "It's like that, sometimes, with things like this. I just need some sleep."

"Okay. You can call me, if you want to talk later." Dave did that, sometimes, when he was having a hard night, and it made Kurt feel useful, whispering into his phone in the late-night dark, talking until Dave fell asleep.

"I know. I'll see how it goes." He leaned over and pressed a soft kiss against Kurt's cheek. When he pulled away, Kurt rubbed at the warmth Dave's lips had left. He raised an eyebrow in question, because they typically shared much less chaste kisses.

Dave just shook his head. "Too much tonight."

Kurt nodded. "I understand." And he did.

"My dad's waiting on me. See you tomorrow?"

"You know it." Kurt smiled, and Dave shrugged back into his jacket before heading into the hall and closing the door behind him.

It was close to an hour before Sarah returned, trailing an unraveling ball of gray yarn and her knitting needles. She slid in next to Kurt without a word, her hands almost instantly taking up the motion of _knit 2 purl 2_as Kurt typed away on his paper. He was learning, from watching Sarah and Carole, that Sarah would talk when she was ready, when the rhythm of her stitches had calmed her frayed nerves enough. Tonight, it was almost an hour before she set her needles aside and rested her head on his shoulder. He turned off his music, and began the process of saving his work and shutting his laptop off.

"I wasn't planning to kill myself or anything. You know that, right?" Sarah was whispering. She always did when they talked about the hard stuff. It reminded Kurt of the way Puck used to be.

"I know." He leaned over and shoved his laptop under his nightstand, righted himself, and put his arm around Sarah's back, pulling her closer. "I never thought you were."

"I think Puck does. Think that's what I was trying to do." She threw her own arm over Kurt's chest; he liked the light weight of it there.

"Have you guys talked about it, in counselling?" Kurt never asked about the sessions Sarah and Puck were going to together, but Sarah brought it up sometimes.

"Puck doesn't talk about anything in counselling. He saves it for the car ride home." Sarah's voice was tinged with anger, but it wasn't the soul-crushing darkness of early fall. That made Kurt relax a little.

"But you guys are talking, at least."

"Sort of." Sarah started tugging at the blankets, trying to move enough to get one pulled up over her legs. Kurt shrugged her off, and pulled her up off the bed.

"We might be more comfortable in pj's." He pulled his own sleep pants and t-shirt from the back of his desk chair, and changed, and then turned his back so she could change without him watching. Neither of them were uncomfortable; they'd been sharing a bed since middle school, but Kurt still liked to give Sarah some privacy when he could. Especially now that they were sharing a room in addition to a bed.

They took turns in the bathroom, and when Sarah returned from brushing her teeth Kurt was already settled in. He held the covers back for her, and she crawled in next to him, nestled with her back against his chest. He rested his cheek against her scalp, where her hair felt like peach fuzz.

"I love you, K." She sounded suddenly lost.

"Talk to me, Sas." Kurt felt her shiver as his breath tickled her head.

"I just . . . " He heard her swallow back a soft sob. "I'm so lucky to have you. You know? Lots of the kids at group don't have anyone who really cares about them. Most of their parents and friends are angry at them."

"For what?"

"For whatever. Whatever makes them less than perfect."

"For being in pain, you mean." Sarah was his heart; Kurt couldn't imagine faulting her just because she was hurting.

"I guess. In pain, angry, dying inside. You didn't abandon me." Kurt knew what was being left behind. It was in the echo of every discussion they'd had about Sarah's problems. Kurt stuck around; Puck ran away.

"He'll come around. Just give it time. I don't think he wants to admit it, but I'll bet he's hurting in his own way." Kurt was sure of it, actually. He'd been watching Puck's rage, simmering lightly under his skin, since spring.

"I miss him. He's my brother. I just want him back." Her words tipped towards desperation, but Kurt soothed her with a kiss to the top of her head.

"I know you do, baby, I know." Kurt wasn't surprised when she turned in his arms. Even though they were close to the same height, when Sarah was vulnerable like that, she felt so much smaller. Kurt reached his thumb up to brush the tears off her cheek, and before he knew what he was even doing, he was following the path of his thumb with his lips, salt and sadness, all the way to Sarah's mouth.

This time, he was kissing her. And she didn't pull away.

She gasped a little, and Kurt thought that while it wasn't the fire he felt when he kissed Dave, it was still _something_; magnetic, with an emotional neediness that was also different from the physicality of kissing Dave. As Sarah yielded to Kurt's lips and tongue, he realized that whatever this was with Sarah was simply the other half of what he shared with Dave. Put them together, and he was complete.

The depth of the realization made him pull away a fraction of an inch. "Sas. I . . . wait. I ca-"

"Don't you dare say you can't again. Don't say you're sorry. Look." This Sarah in his bed was his old Sas, matter-of-fact and a little too blunt. "I know you're gay. Okay? I get it. And I. Don't. Care. God, Kurt, you're like my brother _and _I'm half in love with you. And I think that you might be half in love with me, too."

Kurt let out a shaky breath, startled at Sarah's directness. "Yeah... you might be right. But-"

"But nothing. I want you. Please." There she was, pleading with him again.

"It's not right. Not now. Not without . . . " He held his breath for a moment, waited for the scattered thoughts in his brain to coalesce into something so startling that he wasn't sure what to do with it.

"Not without what?" Sarah was exasperated with him.

"Not what." Kurt couldn't say the words, couldn't put the name out there. He just held Sarah's gaze, hard. He waited for her to ask more questions, but she just stared right back at him. When she finally understood, her eyes went huge. Her response was barely a whisper.

"_Dave._" All Kurt could do was nod. He looked away, afraid of what he'd see in her eyes, but she grabbed his chin again and hauled him back to her. "You love him."

"Yeah," he whispered.

"And you love me."

"God, Sas, you don't even have to ask that."

She smiled. "I wasn't asking." Now, when she kissed him, he could accept it for what it was: a promise. It tasted rich and heady, like fresh-baked bread. Like home.

* * *

><p>Finn's bed had always been big enough for him and Kurt, on those nights when Kurt had slept with him. So it stood to reason that, now that Puck was sleeping in his room most nights, there should be enough room for both of them. But there was a third presence in the bed with them, something that loomed large and bulky and crowded out the closeness he had once felt with Puck. Now there was him and Puck and this third thing, and he wished he knew what it was so he could get it <em>out<em>of there and let him have Puck to himself.

Ever since that first night by the fountain, Puck could touch Finn again, felt comfortable touching him, anywhere Finn wanted him to touch; he would even let Finn rub up against him until he came - it didn't take much, after all - but Finn wasn't allowed to touch him in response. The times he would try to reciprocate, Puck would stiffen and draw back, and lie there motionless until Finn stopped. It made him feel sad, and he wished Puck would just - he wanted him to -

"Puck," he said, urgently, into the dark. "I think I know what you need to do. To fix things with us, with your dad. With yourself."

"I didn't know you thought I needed to be fixed," came the low voice in reply.

"I don't mean it like that," Finn said. He reached across the bed to find Puck's hand, and, after a moment of resistance, Puck took it. "You're scared."

"I'm not scared of you," Puck said hotly.

"You're scared of _something,_" Finn insisted. "I know you won't even talk in counseling. How can I help if you won't _let me?"_

"I want to _let you,"_Puck snarled, and suddenly he was on top of Finn, pressing Finn down into the bed, his fingers digging into Finn's wrists, his elbows making an uncomfortable divot in the space between the muscles of Finn's arms. Finn lost a few heartbeats and his breath stuttered, restarted. "There's things I want - things I want you to - but I can't. I can't, Finn."

"Why not?" he whispered. Puck kissed him hard, harder than he ever had, and it made Finn's body lose all muscle tone until he was a quivering, gelatinous mass on the bed - except for his cock, which was straining and begging for more.

"I can't ask you to do the things I want you to do," Puck said, his voice a rolling wave of pain. "To me."

"Why not?" Finn asked again, hoping desperately that Puck would notice his hard cock and do something about it before he just gave up and went for it himself. "I _want _- to do things to you."

"God," Puck muttered, and dug his nails into Finn's back, biting his neck, and that was all Finn needed. Finn gasped, arched up, pressing his cock into Puck's, and rutted into that smooth spot in Puck's hip that had become his recent best friend. He listened with mounting excitement to the sounds Puck was making, at the same time he tried to stifle the ones coming from his own mouth, knowing Kurt and Sarah were just on the other side of the wall, and not wanting them to be bothered by _just_how close their two best friends had become.

"Is this okay?" Finn asked, pleading, hoping Puck wouldn't say _no, _but still not quite believing that he wanted it, wanted _him,_like this.

"Yeah," Puck urged, "yeah, god, yeah, it's okay... it's more than okay. I want you to come. There's so fucking much I want... "

Finn's brain made some connections, and the pictures that sprang up in his brain were so white-hot that he just made a helpless groan and came on the spot.

Puck reached down between their bodies, swiping some of Finn's come in his hand, and provided his own cock a slick, tight space in his fist. In about thirty seconds he gasped, "_Finn," _and was cursing and thrusting and coming spectacularly onto Finn's neck.

"So what do you think I need to do?" he asked later, when they were clean and prone and lay still once more in the dark. The presence of the third thing was less now, but Finn could still sense it.

"You have to talk to your dad," he said. "Tell him the truth."

"The truth about what?" Puck sounded tired.

"About everything," Finn said. "About you, about what happened with you and Sarah and your mom. About the four of us, and about you and me. Tell him who you are. You can't keep hiding forever."

"And you think that will... fix things?"

"I think it'll help you stop being so scared of what would happen if he found out. Because then he'd know."

"I don't know if I can do it," Puck admitted, and Finn wanted to cheer, because that was probably the bravest thing he'd heard from Puck's mouth since the night he told Finn he loved him.

"I'll be there with you," Finn said. "I'll sit right there in the room. It'll be okay."

Puck rolled over and threw a leg over Finn's thigh, sighing heavily, and something eased in Finn's chest, something that had been lodged there for a while and now had moved on. "That'd be cool," Puck said, very quietly.

As they finally drifted off to sleep, Finn wondered exactly what the third thing was, and why it was so persistent.

* * *

><p>Ruth was at the house when they arrived the next day. They could go days without seeing her, because of her work schedule, and Puck was hardly ever home anymore. She looked happy to see Puck, though, and she gave both of them a hug.<p>

"Your father's here," she said to Puck, like a warning.

"I know," he replied quietly. "I'm here to talk to him."

She looked suddenly terrified, but then she saw Finn's face, and her fear cleared, leaving behind a certain admiration and peace. "That's good, honey," she said.

"Do you want to be there?" Finn asked. "Puck's going to talk about... stuff. About us."

Ruth brushed Finn's hair back from his face, like she used to when he was small and had long hair. Now it stayed back by itself, but the gesture felt so familiar, so comfortable, that he relaxed. "I know all of that stuff already," she said, and Finn realized he wasn't at all surprised to hear her say this. "Your father will want to hear you, and I'd just be a distraction. But... if you need to tell me anything, any time, either of you... you know you can talk to me, right?"

"Sure," Puck said. Finn knew she meant it, but she was never around. He knew neither of them ever _would_talk to her. It was just easier to let her have her own life, and go on with theirs, with Carole and Burt acting as Puck and Sarah's surrogate parents. Finn wondered if Puck ever missed his mother.

Ruth slipped out without another word, and the look on Puck's face told Finn they'd need to act quickly before Puck found an excuse to bail. "You can do it," Finn whispered, and squeezed Puck's shoulder.

"I'm still not sure why I let you talk me into this," Puck muttered, but he pushed into the family room where a curly-haired man in a white t-shirt and jeans was sitting in front of the television. He looked a lot more like Sarah and Puck than their mother did, but that may have been the sadness around his eyes. He looked up as they came in, and quickly looked away.

"Dad?" Puck's voice was almost belligerent. "I need to talk to you."

Puck's father muted the tv, and nodded his head toward the sofa. As they crossed the living room, he looked up and acknowledged them both. "You must be Finn."

"Uh, yeah," Finn said, holding out his hand. "Nice to meet you, sir."

"You, too. Thanks for being a friend to No- _Puck_. And Sarah." Mr. Puckerman leaned back in his chair and looked at them both. Finn felt Puck shift awkwardly next to him, so he leaned in a little with his shoulder. Nobody else would see it, but Puck would feel it.

"Look... can we cut the crap?" Puck said, rolling his eyes at his dad. "You guys don't have to be nice to each other. Finn's just here to listen. You and me, we've got stuff to discuss, man to man. It's been between us a long time."

Puck's father nodded and sighed. "I know. I've been waiting for this. I just thought it would have been sooner than now. Look. This doesn't make up for all the bad shit I did, or all the years I missed. But I'm sorry. You have no idea how sorry. You missed a dad and I missed you."

Puck's eyes widened, and he suddenly looked hard at the floor, his chin wobbling. Finn leaned with his shoulder a little more, hoping he wouldn't knock him off balance or something. "Yeah," Puck said, hoarsely. "I guess... I guess I did miss you. But it's kind of too late for that, Dad. You don't get to be that Dad anymore. Sarah and me, we grew up without you."

"Yeah. Yeah, you did. And I can't change that. But . . . is it too late for me to know you now? I know I have no right to assume anything. But I'd like to know you, and Sarah." Puck's dad looked like he didn't want to _want_too much, like it was hurting him to even have to ask for connection.

Puck looked up at his dad, then back at the floor. He was quiet for a long time. Finn wondered if he should say something, but finally Puck sighed. "I don't know if I can," he said. "I'm not sure what that's going to be like. I don't know if you're going to like what you see. But..." He glanced at Finn. "I'll give it a try."

"Okay. So. Why today? I've been back since spring." His tone was gentle, but Finn could hear an undertone of hurt in Mr. Puckerman's voice.

Finn nudged him with his foot. "Um," Puck said. He glared at Finn.

"It was my fault," Finn spoke up. "I told him he should talk to you. And I said I wouldn't say anything, but jeez, Puck, come on." He faced Mr. Puckerman and ignored the icy stares Puck was giving him. "Me and Puck and Sarah and Kurt, we've been friends since we were little. It's always been the four of us."

"Yeah. Burt and I, we talked a while back. I know some of that. He seems like a good guy." He nodded at Finn. "So you all, the four of you, live with him and your mom?"

Finn glanced at Puck, who was still glaring, but he decided there was no way he could make things any worse, so he just forged ahead. "Yeah. That's right. Sarah and Kurt, they sleep in one room, and... me and Puck, we're in the other." He swallowed and watched Mr. Puckerman's face, waiting for the fallout.

"Burt said Kurt's gay." Finn was a little surprised at that; he'd always kept all of their business to himself, but he wondered if maybe things were different between fathers. Not like he'd know, though Burt was the closest thing to a dad Finn had ever known. He nodded anyway, and Mr. Puckerman kept going. "What about the two of you?"

"Dad!" Puck protested, turning scarlet. "Holy shit. I can't believe this." He crossed his arms and moved away from Finn, but Finn reached out and unknotted Puck's arms, and took Puck's hand in his. Puck tried to pull away, but Finn wouldn't let him go.

"Yeah," said Finn. "I'm gay."

Mr. Puckerman nodded in what Finn thought looked an awful lot like mild approval before turning his gaze to Puck. "And you, son? Are you gay?"

Puck glanced back and forth between Finn and his dad in alarm, eyes growing wider by the second. Finally he steadied his shoulders, looked into his father's face and said, "I don't know. I just - I just know I'm in love with Finn."

"Okay." Mr. Puckerman ran a hand through his hair - _like Puck's used to be_, Finn thought, _back when he was still Noah_. "My, uh. My best friend growing up? Max. We were, um, sixteen, I think, when he told me. He was gay."

"Really?" Finn was still reeling from Puck's declaration, and he turned what was sure to be a big stupid smile on Mr. Puckerman. "That didn't, like, bother you or anything?"

"We were like brothers. He was a good guy." He shook his head, either clearing it out or bringing memories to the forefront, Finn wasn't sure. "It didn't change anything, except that he stopped pretending to be interested when I talked about girls. He lives down in Chicago, now, with his partner and their son."

Puck and Finn, still holding hands, took this information in. "Wow," Finn said.

"How long? The two of you?"

"Kind of always," Finn said, at the same time that Puck said, "A few months." Finn laughed as Puck rolled his eyes, and he squeezed his hand. "Sarah and Kurt..." he continued, then he stopped and watched Mr. Puckerman carefully. He didn't want to give anything private away. There was still a code of silence among the four of them.

Mr. Puckerman looked up at the sound of Sarah's name. "What about Sarah? When I talked with Burt, he said she was pretty angry."

Finn shared a glance with Puck. "I'm sorry, sir. That's, um. It's not really my - _our_- place to tell you that. She and Kurt, though, they're both good for each other."

Mr. Puckerman watched them solemnly. "The two of you - I can tell - you're good for each other, too." He cleared his throat. "I'm glad you're happy, son. You deserve it."

Puck offered his father an awkward smile. "Thanks." He squeezed Finn's hand again, and Finn squeezed back even as he was shocked by Puck's next words. "I didn't think I needed your approval. But maybe I wanted it just the same."

"I'm... happy to hear that," his father said gruffly. He looked like he might cry, or try to hug him, so Finn gave Puck a big shove and made Puck hug him first. Luckily, Puck wasn't in any position to complain.

"Do you guys think Sarah might be willing to talk to me like this, sometime?" asked Mr. Puckerman, somewhat wistfully, as they stood to go. "I'd like a chance to apologize. You know, start fresh."

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask," Puck said. "I could talk to Kurt. Sometimes he can get Sarah to do things, if he asks her to."

"She always was stubborn," he said. He held out his hand for Finn to shake. "You two take care of each other. Puck - Noah - thanks for giving this another chance." His eyes were moist. "You have no idea what it means to me."

"Yeah," said Puck, his eyes locked on Finn. "I think I do."

* * *

><p>Puck pounced on Finn the moment they walked into the Hudmel house. "You were awesome," he gasped between sloppy kisses.<p>

"You think so?" Finn said, trying to keep up with Puck's roving hands. He slid Puck's jacket off and tossed it on the couch.

"Dude," Puck said. "Get the fuck upstairs."

"Um," said Kurt's long-suffering voice, from under Puck's jacket. "Yes. Please."

Finn stifled a surprised laugh and watched Puck's reaction, expecting him to pull his usual angry bluster, but Puck just grinned at Kurt, peeking out from under the jacket, and said, "Yeah, you'd better not bother us for the next hour or so. We've got some unfinished business to take care of."

"I really did not need to hear that!" Kurt called after them, but Finn could hear him smiling, even as Finn was taking the stairs three at a time.

"What kind of... um, business... did you have in mind?" Finn had to ask, watching Puck's eyes on him become distinctly predatory. He decided it was a safe risk to start unzipping his pants once they'd closed the door to their room.

"There's something I want you to do." Puck gave him a little push, and Finn wound up sprawled on the bed, his legs caught in his jeans. He felt like an insect specimen, stuck to the display board with a pin, unable to do more than twitch under the scrutiny of the scientist.

"What?" Finn said, his voice catching in his throat.

Puck crawled on top of him and put his face right down to his ear. "I want you to fuck me," he breathed.

"Really?" Finn said, his voice coming out six or seven notes higher than usual.

"Really. Think you can manage that?"

Finn's mouth was suddenly dry, and he licked his lips and stammered, "I - I think I can do that, yeah."

"Good." Puck wrestled his shirt over his head and dumped it over the edge of the bed, his eyes roving over Finn's body like he was a sirloin steak, and Puck hadn't had anything to eat all week. "I've been thinking about that for a long time."

Finn struggled to kick off his jeans without losing his vantage point; being knelt over by Puck was just about the hottest thing he'd ever seen. "... How long?" he asked, tentatively.

"Long enough to have a pretty good idea of how I want it," Puck said. He was unzipping his jeans, which Finn thought was totally unfair, so he reached up and did it for him, prompting a totally awesome gasp from Puck.

"What changed?" he wanted to know. "Why now?"

Puck put a hand on Finn's, helping him wriggle out of his jeans. "I guess it was the talking," he said. "You were right. It was what I needed."

"I was right?" Finn paused in triumph, to savor the moment. "Wow."

Puck rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Yeah, you were right. Now come on. Whatever was broken? Fixed now. Now you get to fuck me. Deal?"

"You really want that?" Finn whispered. Suddenly he realized the enormity of what Puck was asking, the significance of it, and he felt dizzy with responsibility. "You want _me _to... "

"Finn." Puck's eyebrows were dangerously high. "I've never been big on talking. I'm done with it now."

The third thing - it was gone. It was just them, there in the room, and Finn reveled in the feeling of freedom, the sense that he and Puck could finally, finally touch one another and not be distracted, not be worried about anything else. It could just be about them.

* * *

><p>Dave saw Puck waiting for him at the fountain from the other side of the park, but he took his sweet fucking time getting there. Puck was a badass, it was true. Dave wasn't scared of him, exactly, but there was definitely something there that could be perceived as dangerous.<p>

And this thing with Sarah - if Puck was going to be upset at somebody, it could very well be him, especially if he thought Dave was coming between his sister and his boyhood friend. He wasn't even sure how he could explain what was going on with Sarah. She was just part of the environment of this weird, crazy house, with its four friends and two unrelated parents and the way everybody just fit together into a whole, like pieces of a puzzle box.

No matter how short he made his footsteps, eventually they were going to take him across the peninsula of Schoonover Park to the silent circle of concrete that used to be the fountain. As he approached, he saw someone had painted _fuck the african-americans_in green paint on the side. He shook his head, but Puck was grinning. "What?" He nodded at the graffiti. "You don't think that's funny, do you? Cause I'd have to kick your ass if you turned out to be racist."

"No, man," Puck said, shaking his head. "It's just the fucking idiocy of the people in this town. You can't take the racism out of them, but clearly you can condition them not to say certain derogatory words about black people." He sighed and looked across the pond. "I can't wait to get out of this fucking place."

"Yeah?" Dave propped himself against the well-carved tree, older than dirt, with limbs as thick as his waist and branches that brushed the ground under their weight. "Where you planning to go?"

"Anywhere Finn goes," Puck said. "He'll get into college somewhere. I'm applying, but I'm not counting on anything. My grades in math alone are taking me out of the running for most schools. But I don't care - I can get a job. Burt said he can find me a place in a garage in just about any major city in the U.S." He grinned. Dave didn't think he'd ever seen him so calm, so at home in himself.

"You look good," he said. "Happy."

"I am," Puck said simply. His eyes on Dave were keen. "Looks like you're not quite there, yourself."

Dave shifted and crossed his arms. "I'm doing pretty well, actually."

"Uh-uh," he said. "I see stuff. I know how you're doing. It's not _pretty well._You're still freaking out inside."

"I don't -"

Puck sighed again as he stood, and took the few short steps to approach Dave. Those steps made Dave feel like running, but he held his ground and stared back at Puck as he crossed to him. His personal space was coming dangerously close to being invaded.

He tried not to shrink back as Puck put a hand on his sleeve. "You, and Kurt?" he said.

"Yeah," Dave agreed. He let his eyes come up to Puck's for a moment. "You, and Finn?"

"Yeah," Puck said quietly. "But that's not all. It's - all of us. Me, and Finn, and Kurt and Sarah." Puck touched the tree behind Dave, and Dave looked to see the heart he was stroking, carved in the trunk. He realized with a start that it had all four of their initials inside. "And now there's you."

"Uh," Dave said, feeling the anxiety begin in his stomach. It was the same feeling he'd had every year, coming into a new school, being on the outside, shut out of friendships that had formed over years together. "Yeah. About that..."

"Dave." Puck's voice was forceful and brought Dave's eyes snapping up to his, and he realized Puck was smiling. "I know it's fucking crazy. I've been running away from it most of my life. But no more. This - what we have, the four of us... the five of us. It's more than most people get in a lifetime."

"I don't exactly know what you mean," Dave said, pressing back against the tree in an effort to put some space between them. Puck wasn't big, but he was fucking intimidating.

"Finn, he got me to talk to my dad," he said. "I've been scared of him all my life. Turns out he's a pretty nice guy. He even has a gay best friend. He thinks I'm fine the way I am." He laughed, and it was a bright, surprising sound. "I never expected that."

"That's - great, man." Dave watched Puck with wary eyes. "So you're not mad at your dad anymore?"

"No," Puck said. "I mean, I might be sometimes, but it's not controlling me anymore. I'm not afraid to _want_things now." Puck looked up, across the park, and something he saw made him nod in satisfaction. Dave followed his gaze to see Sarah and Kurt walking together down the sidewalk, and he felt suddenly, inexplicably terrified.

"No," Puck said again, and he put his hand on Dave's arm. "You need to hear this. Just - wait." His head came in close to Dave's, more intimate than Dave would have ever expected from Puck, and for a minute he thought Puck was going to kiss him. But Puck just talked into his ear. "I didn't say much, for a long time. I was basically on mute, for four years. It makes you notice things. I know Kurt and Sarah - they belong together. They just do. But they're missing something."

Puck's breath was hot on his neck. Dave swallowed the lump in his throat, and tried not to let the tears fall. He couldn't say anything.

"It's you," Puck whispered. "They need you. Don't let them down, okay?"

And then Puck was hugging him, tight and quick, before turning away and heading back down the path toward the shore. He and Sarah connected in a low-five as they walked past one another. She and Kurt were hand in hand, but Kurt wasn't looking at Dave. Sarah's gaze, on the other hand, wouldn't land anywhere else - he couldn't escape her piercing stare no matter where he went, like the eyes of an old portrait that followed you around the room.

"What was that all about?" Sarah asked, curiously, but Dave shook his head, still unable to speak. She came to him, tucked herself under his arm, the way she had, just fitting into his space, and put her fuzz-covered head on the space under his shoulder. "Baby..."

"Don't - don't call me that," he choked, squeezing his eyes tight.

"Okay," she soothed, stroking his chest. "It's okay."

"My mom - she called me..." He took a deep breath, and found Kurt watching him at last, his own pain and confusion just under the surface, but his concern for Dave overriding that. "I was her baby," he said, willing himself not to cry. "And she fucking left."

Sarah directed him with gentle pushes, over to the edge of the fountain, and they sat on the dirty concrete lip, facing the sun going down over the lake. "What happened?" Kurt asked, in his gentle, patient voice.

"She - she took my sister," he said, staring at his hands. "They went to the beach. That was all. I knew they weren't coming back. I gave - I gave my sister my house key. On a string. Told her it would keep her safe until she could come h-home." He shook his head. "I haven't seen her since. Haven't seen either one."

"Dave," Kurt sighed, and their arms were all around him, enfolding him in their quartet of warmth, and that was too fucking much. He was glad the park was largely deserted in the spring dusk, because he was sobbing now, and it didn't look like he was going to stop any time soon. Sarah just held on with an unbreakable grip, and Kurt brushed delicate touches over his back and shoulders.

Dave shuddered as he cried, and felt himself letting go of something he'd held to, something he'd convinced himself was true, but in the face of this new brutal honesty from Puck, was crumbling to dust. The strange intimacy of Puck's words, coupled with the closeness of his two friends - his two _best_friends, he knew it was true - lit a fire inside him, and when Kurt offered kisses of comfort, he responded with blistering heat. Kurt gasped at his passion.

Sarah tried to slip away from under his arms, but he held her close, wouldn't let her go when she tried to evade him. "Sas," he said, and her eyes went wide under the weight of that childhood nickname.

"Fuck that," she said, stroking his face. "If you get to call me Sas, I think I can call you baby."

"Yeah," he said thickly. He let her touch his face, feel his afternoon accumulation of stubble, that had plagued him since the beginning of ninth grade. He watched Kurt watching him with dawning understanding, and when he saw nothing but acceptance and - yes, love - in his eyes, he let out a great big relieved breath.

"Your brother said - he said -" He thought he couldn't go on, but they were patiently waiting, didn't make him talk, until he was able to push through the fear. "He said we belong together. All of us." And still, their eyes were trusting, waiting. He shook his head in amazement. "Do you want that?"

"Yes," Kurt said, and Sarah nodded. "Dave - I'm part of Sarah, and she's part of me. I love her in a way I don't think I can even describe. But I also know I'm gay. Well, mostly." He laughed. "It's complicated, right?"

"Less and less, apparently," Dave said, still disbelieving the reality of their situation. And then Sarah was kissing him, her lips velvet-soft, and he let himself feel the connection between them, strong and thrumming like a live wire, and it was hot and intense and oh, so right.

"God," Kurt breathed. He stroked Dave's face, just as Sarah had, and his hand felt completely different, though no less at home on his cheek. Sarah and Kurt's hands intertwined before him, and that act suddenly had so many more implications than it had just a few minutes before. He groaned into Sarah's kiss, and she made a soft, encouraging noise.

"I had no idea," Sarah said, when their lips parted. "But, _fuck._Dave." The heat in her face was trained on him, and her soft curves felt familiar against his side. She gave Kurt a nudge, and Dave guessed the anticipation in his face mirrored his own, because they fell together like two halves of a magnetic whole, without losing one bit of their need for Sarah's presence.

"Me, neither," Dave said. "But I really - I can't believe how I didn't see it. How I didn't realize how much -"

"Yeah," Kurt said, low and thrilling. His hand slipped down Dave's chest to his stomach, and Dave couldn't stop the sound of want that came out of his mouth. Both Kurt and Sarah responded to it with gasping immediacy.

"Wait," Dave said, and they paused, reluctantly. "This is - kind of fast. And very public. Can we-?"

"Back to my house?" Kurt said, and they glanced at each other in expectant delight as they nodded together. He took each of their hands, and they stood as one body, moving together down the sidewalk.

"We need to talk about this," Dave insisted. "We can't just - you know. It's too complicated for that."

"I'm not sure what needs to be said," Sarah said, her small hand dwarfed in his. "I think we should just take it as it comes. We get to decide." She squeezed his hand, and her voice was fierce. "We do. Together."

* * *

><p><span>Senior Year, May<span>

The early May sun was warm, but the air still held a tinge of coolness when Kurt pulled the Navigator into the parking lot at the edge of Schoonover Park. He got out and waited while Dave unfolded himself from the passenger seat and Sarah tumbled out of the back, and then he set them to work. Dave took the cooler, Sarah the big stadium blanket they usually took to football games.

"Where are they?" Kurt said, squinting across the street, looking for Puck's truck, but the parking lot in front of Hummel Tires and Lube was empty for the weekend.

"Finn texted to say they would be late," Sarah said. "I say we get started without them. I'm fucking starving."

Kurt leaned over Sarah to help her with the blanket, their hands touching, and Sarah's face softened. They'd been closer than ever these past weeks, since she and Dave and Kurt had embarked upon this new stage in their relationship. It felt comfortable, but exciting at the same time, and Kurt felt the shiver up his spine that meant _Sarah loves me._It wasn't scary anymore.

They spread the blanket on the soft grass by the lake, looking over the water to the geese swimming by. "It's too bad baby geese don't stay cute for long," Kurt said, and Dave chuckled, setting a container of potato salad on the blanket.

"What's wrong with geese?" he asked.

Sarah snorted. "They're like rats with wings." She unzipped the bag of chocolate chip cookies and stole three of them before Dave could snatch the bag away from her.

"I thought those were seagulls?"

"These are the originals. Plus they shit all over everything."

"Hey, those are for everybody," he said, stashing the cookie bag back in the cooler.

"I told you," she mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs, "I'm fucking starving!"

"You want me to feed you something?" Dave muttered, and Kurt responded with a gentle hand on his back. Sarah's low chuckle was indicative of things to come. Kurt would be surprised if they could get through the picnic without the two of them sneaking off to make out behind the stand of birch trees. It wasn't a problem with _him, _if they did, but he didn't want Puck or Finn to get uncomfortable about it. He still wasn't quite sure what they thought about their new relationship configuration.

Kurt was so focused on the feel of Dave's firm back under his hand, of the way Sarah was looking at them both with wide, warm eyes, that he didn't notice shadows crossing the grass until Finn and Puck were practically pouncing onto the blanket.

"You save us any of that potato salad?" Finn said, grinning at Kurt and folding himself into a comfortable cross-legged heap beside the cooler. He found a spoon and took off the lid, digging in with a happy sigh.

"You're not going to eat it _all,"_Kurt said severely. Then he saw the expression on Puck's face, and he paused. "Noah - I mean, Puck - what -?"

"It came," Puck said, his voice cracking, and he waved the letter in Kurt's face, but Sarah was the one to snatch it out of his hand. "I - I was scared to open it, but Finn made me, I couldn't - " He stopped, overcome, and Finn put a hand on his leg to steady him.

"_And?"_Kurt said, throwing his hands out, and Sarah grabbed one of them as she unfolded the letter. She smoothed it against Dave's broad back, and began to read aloud, her excitement mounting.

"Noah Puckerman, we are pleased to congratulate you on your acceptance to Eastern Michigan University -" That was all she was able to get out before she dissolved in exuberant squeals, and she threw her arms around her brother, nearly knocking him onto the grass in her enthusiasm.

"You got in! I knew you would," Kurt said, his smile nearly splitting his face in two. He felt Dave's warm presence beside him, and he felt his heart skip a beat as Puck pushed forward and wrapped his arms around Dave's chest. They hugged like brothers, and Kurt could only watch, breathless, as Finn came forward to join their embrace.

"This is too perfect," Sarah said, and Kurt knew she wasn't just talking about the letter. Puck pulled back to gaze at his sister, his cheeks wet. "Eastern Michigan - it's right down the road from University of Michigan." She looked back and forth between Dave and Kurt. "You got in, right?"

"Yeah," Dave said, his voice hushed. Kurt nodded, suddenly speechless with the possibility. Finn was the first to say it aloud.

"I think we should all rent a house together." Puck's startled face quickly gave way to wonder, and Finn smiled big, interlacing his fingers into Puck's. "It would be awesome."

"I can't imagine being away from any of you," Sarah said. They all looked at her, the five of them, and suddenly they were standing in a circle, facing each other, as though they'd planned it.

Dave cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Um... I'm not sure if... well."

"Well _what_, baby?" Sarah leaned into him, and Kurt could feel Dave's slight hesitation in the moment before he relaxed into Sarah's touch.

"I guess I can't assume I'm included in that proposal," he said quietly, but Puck cut him off with a hand on his, and Dave looked up, eyes wide.

"Yeah, you are," Puck said. "You belong, just as much as any of us do. You're part of this now."

Kurt let the tears win, and he felt Sarah's arm around him at the same time he reached for Dave's other hand. Dave's silent nod was enough of an answer.

Sarah squeezed Kurt's hand once, and then broke away from the circle, diving for her backpack where it sat at the edge of the blanket. She opened it and rummaged inside for a moment before emerging triumphant with a sleek-looking black box in her hands. She held it up, and Kurt recognized it immediately.

"You got new markers!" He couldn't hide the smile in his voice.

"I did." She looked at each of them in turn. "It's been a long time since we did this. And, I think it's time we gave Dave some magic, too."

"Magic?" Dave shook his head, looking confused.

"When we were kids." Puck's voice was soft and level. "The bad year, Sarah gave us all magic."

Dave looked at Kurt. "The bad year. Third grade?" At Kurt's nod, Dave stared back at Puck. "Third grade was my bad year, too."

Sarah settled on the blanket and opened the markers. "Then you need extra magic, baby. You have some catching up to do. Now," she looked around the circle, "who's first?"

Finn held his arm out, and Sarah ran her fingers over the markers before selecting a deep blue one. "Same as always?"

Finn nodded, and she set to work. Within a minute, Finn was sporting an hourglass on the inside of his arm, just above his wrist.

Finn stroked the shape of the symbol, a pleased smile on his lips. "It'll give me time," he said. "Time to be - just be. With you." He looked first at Puck, then at the others in turn. "All of you."

Sarah didn't ask who was next, she just grabbed Puck and wrestled his arm into her lap. The hand Sarah left there was, like always, stark and black. Dave looked at it, then up at Puck.

"It used to keep people away from me," Puck said. "It's different now. For a long time I was afraid to be touched. Now I - I want it." He reached for Finn, but it was Kurt who took his hand. "I'm not afraid to want it," he said, meeting Kurt's eyes. They shared a smile, and Finn pressed a kiss to his temple.

Kurt nestled in next to Sarah. "Me next." Her touch was gentle, and the sloping, delicate-winged butterfly was both more refined and more colorful than what her eight year old hands had been able to manage. Kurt felt something inside him take flight upon its completion, and the smile he turned on Sarah made her blush.

"Baby," she said, touching Dave's arm, "would you do mine?"

The color drained from Dave's face, and for a moment he looked like he might bolt. "You - Sas, you're the fucking artist, not me."

"But you're the key," she said simply. "I need you to do it."

Dave took the black marker awkwardly, and when he touched the felt tip to Sarah's arm, his hand was shaking. "What am I doing?"

"A question mark." Kurt's voice came in a whisper of reassurance, and Dave's hand steadied almost instantly.

"So what's the question?" he said, as the symbol appeared, as if by magic, on her skin.

She smiled up at him with clear eyes. "I'm done asking," she said. "I've found my answer." She took the marker from his hand and stroked the inside of his arm with her fingers, making Dave shiver. "Your turn."

Dave watched her with trusting eyes as she drew a stylized, old-fashioned key in the crease of his elbow. "That's - fucking awesome," he said, blinking. Before he could pull away, she kissed him, quick and firm, and snapped the marker closed.

By the time the potato salad and the sandwiches were gone, Kurt and Finn had used Kurt's phone to find three possible houses on Craig's List in Ann Arbor, and were already planning the road trip up to check them out. Dave was listening with half an ear, but he couldn't stop tracing the shape of the key in the crook of his arm, and he barely noticed Puck beside him on the blanket before he reached out to touch his shoulder.

"What's that all about?" Puck said, indicating the key.

Dave closed his eyes, and felt Sarah squeeze his hand. Kurt leaned in and rested his chin on Dave's shoulder, offering silent support. Over recent weeks, Dave had told them both the whole story about his mom and sister, had let it drip out slowly in late nights when the three of them were safe together in Kurt's bed. Telling Finn and Puck was going to be different, without the luxury of time. He took a breath, and began. "My mom."

"What about her?" Finn had dug the bag of cookies out of the cooler and was munching his way through a stack.

Dave turned his options over in his head. There were lots of ways to approach his history, but he didn't feel like he had the time or emotions for the same drawn out telling he'd had with Kurt and Sarah, so he figured he'd be better off just jumping into it. "She would drink, a lot. It messed with her judgment. She'd do stupid stuff, like book a flight to Disneyworld and pull us out of school for a week. I didn't realize it was so bad until my sister was -"

"Your _sister?"_Finn interrupted, his face clouding. Puck rocked back and watched Dave closely as he continued his story, but his hand returned to his shoulder and he didn't let go this time.

"Yeah. She's five years younger than me. My mom, she and my dad were always fighting, and the moving around didn't help at all. I think she just couldn't take it anymore. She took my sister and they - I don't even know. They just disappeared." He felt the familiar ache in his gut, his heart, but somehow it wasn't as sharp as it had been. Puck's hand was warm on his back, and Sarah and Kurt were firmly attached to his side, and their silent support was like a thick blanket over the painful memories. "I can't be sure what happened after that, but I think they went to my aunt's."

Puck's voice was hushed. "You haven't seen her in eight years?"

"Nine," Dave said. "Or it will be, in June. It's 3,239 days, today."

"Shit," Puck said. "Man, I'm sorry. That really sucks."

Dave shrugged. "Hey, everybody's got their baggage. This is just mine."

"Ours, now," Sarah corrected, sliding her hands around his arm and giving him a tug. "Come here." He found himself in her embrace, and Kurt joined them, holding them together. They stood together for a minute, kind of lost in each other, until Sarah turned to Kurt and whispered in his ear.

Kurt eyed Finn, and held out his hand. "C'mon, brother of mine. Let's go over to the garage and use the office computer to do some more house research."

Finn grabbed two more cookies from the half-empty package, and followed Kurt across the park without a question; it didn't matter how much time Dave spent with the four of them, he still didn't always get the complete and utter trust that existed among them. When Finn and Kurt were just specks on the sidewalk, Sarah nestled herself under Dave's arm and took his hand. She didn't need to look at him; her voice told him everything. "Tell him, baby. The _whole_story."

Puck shook his head. "Dude, really. You don't have to." Dave knew that Puck understood, both the keeping of secrets _and_ the telling of them, and he knew that he could just shake his head and Puck would leave it alone, even if Sarah wouldn't. But Dave couldn't do that, because everything he knew about families, _real_families, told him that telling this secret wouldn't hurt.

"My dad gave her an ultimatum. Get help. And she wouldn't, or couldn't. I'm not sure it ever mattered. What mattered, what _fucking mattered_, was Lilly. She just . . . she drove off, with Lilly crying in the back seat, and my dad _let_her." Dave couldn't stop the tears; they were always there when he thought about Lilly. "I knew she was scared, so I gave her the only thing I had that meant anything. My house key. I tied it around her neck on a string, and tucked it under her dress. There was nothing I could do."

Puck's eyes echoed the pain on Dave's face, but he shook his head. "Dave... I know you've been sitting on this a long time, but... there's always something you can do. I think you need to find her. I'm sure it won't be easy, but - god, you just have to fucking go for it." He let his eyes flicker up to the garage across the lake. "We're here, you know, to help. Me, and Finn. We're your brothers now, too."

Dave just stared at Puck, stunned. _What was he supposed to do with that?_He shook his head in confusion. "I don't even know where to start."

Puck's voice was confident. "That's what family is for. We'll help you find the way."


	7. Chapter 7

23 Years Old

Dave stood at the grill with Burt, touching the brand-new sunburn on his neck as he carefully turned over their dinner: burgers for Burt, Finn, Puck and himself; salmon patties for Kurt, Sarah, Carole and the three toddlers. He'd spent all afternoon yesterday at the beach with the kids and Sarah while Burt and Carole took Finn, Puck and Kurt out for lunch, and he hadn't realized they'd been out in the sun as long as they had. He was glad he'd remembered to put sunscreen on the kids, at least.

He had one eye on the grill, but the other was on the twins toddling around the backyard with Cleo. Even though Sarah and Carole were keeping a close eye on the kids, they never left his consciousness when he was around them. It was amazing what being a father did to a person, he thought. He was still blown away by the whole thing.

He could hear Kurt's voice wafting out from the house, singing some showtune or another, and Finn joining in with occasional harmony. He couldn't hear Puck's voice, but that wasn't surprising; Puck still didn't sing much when other people could hear. Every now and then, in the evening when the kids were sleeping, Dave got him to jam along with him on the guitar. It was one of his favorite ways to spend time with him.

Burt adjusted the bill of his ball cap and nodded at the three kids, tripping over their eighteen-month-old feet in the grass. "They play together like they were siblings." His expression looked like Dave felt, kind of awed and rueful and content all at once.

"I guess they're cousins, of a sort?" he said, grinning, and Burt nodded. He prodded the salmon with his spatula and took the burgers off the grill, leaving one for Puck, who liked his meat well-done.

"You guys ever regret not knowing?" Burt's voice was speculative; Dave followed his gaze to the boys, all curly hair and hazel eyes like Sarah, with no clear evidence of either he _or_Kurt in their genetics.

He shook his head. "Never. We never thought about it all that hard, really. I mean, we're all family anyway." Dave took a swig from his root beer and looked back at Burt, who was watching Carole and their daughter with so much love. "What about you? Having Cleo didn't change Carole's mind about marrying you, did it?"

Burt laughed, low and full. "Nope. I suppose it doesn't really matter anymore, anyway. Like you said, we're all family and have been for a long time."

Dave started then, as Aidan tripped over the root of a tree and Ethan started crying in that weird connected way twins seemed to have, but Puck was suddenly there, lifting Aidan back to his feet as Sarah scooped Ethan into her lap and smothered him with kisses. In moments, all four of them were laughing. Dave shivered at the sound. _Happy_, he thought. _I'm happy_.

It was like Burt read his mind. "You really look like you've made a place for yourself here," he said quietly. "All of you, but - especially you, Dave. Carole and I, we want you to know how glad we are to have you in our family. Kurt, he's still crazy about you."

"I'm crazy about him," Dave said, looking shyly at his feet. He felt the by-now familiar blush spreading across his chest. "All of them, really."

"It's mutual, man." Puck, holding Aidan on his shoulders, trudged up the slope of the lawn, the two of them wearing nearly identical smiles. Dave set down his spatula and wiped his hands on his grill apron before taking hold of Aidan and swinging him into his arms. He was only a little embarrassed when Puck planted a kiss on his lips, but Burt and Carole were clear about the way things were with all of them; he knew it was okay.

"Dada," Aidan said with relish, and squealed as Dave draped his squirming form over one arm, doing acrobatics. He made a raspberry noise on Aidan's tummy and got in a three-second hug before the toddler twisted away and escaped across the patio.

"He's getting faster," Burt chuckled. "You're never going to keep up with him. Good thing Ethan's more calm."

"Yeah." Dave grinned at his other son, still happily sitting in Sarah's lap, pointing at the hippos in the book she was reading to him. "He's more like Kurt."

"Except Kurt was a holy terror when he was a toddler," Burt pointed out, lifting the rest of the burgers off the grill and onto a plate. He grinned and indicated his baby daughter, who was clutching a big maple leaf and clambering into the other half of Sarah's lap. "This one's like a dream baby. I never thought being a parent - again - could feel so easy."

"I guess it has something to do with the people you're doing it with," Puck said, his arm sliding around Dave's shoulder.

Dave heard the faint trilling of the doorbell, and the water turning off at the kitchen sink; it wasn't unusual for the teenagers who lived down the street to come over and take the boys to play with the other kids in the neighborhood on Sundays, so Dave didn't think too much more on it before turning his attention back to Ethan and Sarah, and to Aidan who was running circles around them in an attempt to start a game of chase. He laughed lightly under his breath, and was interrupted by Kurt's slightly edgy voice echoing from the open kitchen window.

"Baby?"

"Yeah?" Dave and Puck chorused back, and Dave caught Burt trying to smother a grin.

"You should come inside." Dave didn't like the tightness in Kurt's tone. It wasn't angry exactly, but Dave knew that something wasn't right. He grabbed Puck's hand with a nod to Burt, and called across the yard.

"Sas? Leave the boys. Kurt needs us in the house." Sarah shifted, and Ethan and Cleo were up and chasing Aidan and the book was in Carole's hand before Dave had a chance to breathe. Sarah was there next to him in what felt like an instant. She took his free hand and pulled him and Puck through the sliding door and into the cool and dim of the air-conditioned house.

Dave let go of Puck and Sarah and followed the sound of Kurt's voice through the kitchen and living room to the entryway, where he was talking with a teenage girl. He didn't recognize her from the neighborhood. She was maybe an inch or two shorter than Kurt, dressed in a way that made Dave think of Sarah in her darkest days. She looked up at the press of bodies into the hall, and Dave suddenly couldn't breathe.

"Davey?" Her whisper was low and rich, her green eyes mirrors of his own.

"Lilly-belle." He kind of felt like he was going to pass out until he felt Puck's hand firm on his shoulder. He took a step forward, and she did the same. He wanted to grab her into a hug, but there was a challenging tilt to her chin that made him hold back.

"Mama changed it. I've been Grace a long time. I wanted to change it back the second I turned 18, but I still had all of senior year to go. Mama thought it would be too confusing, or too much work or something, with all my school records." She laughed harshly. "Like it wasn't confusing for _me_when she changed it in the first place."

Dave was mute. He couldn't find any words at all, but Puck spoke up from behind him. "That's what made it so hard for us to find you."

Sarah nestled her hand in Dave's, and smiled at Lilly. "We've been waiting a long time for you. Your mother wouldn't let Dave contact you until you finished school, and the letter he sent in June got returned."

Lilly shrugged. "Typical Mama, get scared and move. And forget about a change of address. But I suppose when you can barely get out of bed some days, there are bigger things to worry about."

"How- Mom? Is she-?" Sarah's hand squeezed his, and he closed his eyes for a moment to clear his head. When he tried again, the words were there. "How is Mom?"

Lilly's eyes were steel, her words glass. "How do you think?"

"The same, I suspect. The same as always."

"If by _same as always_you mean drunk off her ass and crazy to boot, then yes. She's the same as always." Dave winced. He'd known what the answer was going to be before he'd asked, but hearing it aloud hurt worse than just imagining the way of things ever had.

Sarah beckoned Lilly into the house, and she followed, somewhat reluctantly, setting her bag down beside her. "You look like you've been on the road a while. Can we get you something to eat?"

"Just a glass of water." Lilly's eyes took in Dave and Puck, and as Kurt moved close between the two of them, her expression grew more perplexed. "What is this place, like, a hippie commune or something?"

"It's our home," Finn said, handing Lilly a glass of water. She sipped it, her eyebrows raised at Finn. He shrugged. "This is our family."

"This...?" She looked back at Dave, seeking clarity, and he felt another wave of dizzy disbelief at her presence in his kitchen. It was a little unreal. Kurt seemed to sense his need for support, and he spoke up.

"We all depend on each other. It's the way it's always been. Dave's part of it." He smiled up at Dave and leaned back into his body, and even though he was the one standing in the crook of Dave's arm, Dave felt like Kurt was holding him up.

"So . . . you all . . .?" Dave watched Lilly's eyes flickering among them, taking in Kurt and Dave, and Puck's slightly possessive hand at the small of Finn's back, and the easy way that Sarah moved around all of them, and he heard Puck laugh lightly.

"No. Sarah and I are twins. Finn and I, we've been together since high school." He cocked his head toward Kurt and Dave. "Those three, well. That's been since high school, too, even though _someone_still claims that he's gay."

Kurt laughed against Dave's side. "Fluidity, Puck. I thought I'd taught you better than that."

"Whatever, man. As long as you're happy." The glance Puck shared with Kurt was lightly teasing, overlain with smoldering heat.

Finn took in Lilly's still-confused face and spoke gently. "Yes, before you ask. I share Puck with Dave and Kurt. And I'm fine with that." The reassurance behind his words seemed as much for Puck's benefit as it was for Lilly's. "But that's a more recent development."

Lilly shook her head the way Dave always did when he needed to settle his jumbled thoughts, and then listened, hearing the sound of the kids laughing out in the yard. "Who's that?"

Sarah moved forward then, resting a gentle arm across Lilly's shoulders. "For you, probably more complicated and overwhelming. For us? The rest of the family."

* * *

><p>"You're handling this remarkably well," Carole said to Dave, watching Lily and Kurt play with the twins on the floor beside the couch. Dave smiled as Lilly held Ethan on her lap, telling him secrets in his tiny ear. Ethan's smile was a perfect mirror of Lilly's.<p>

"Don't get me wrong," Dave said quietly. "I'm a little overwhelmed. But - even from the first day, I always felt like I belonged here, with this family." He gestured at Lilly, laughing with Sarah. "She's doing the same thing. That makes it all so easy to accept."

Carole smiled. "I know overwhelming. Just keep breathing. You'll be okay."

Dave touched his arm and cocked his head at Carole. "Did Finn ever tell you about the magic?"

"Do you mean Sarah's markers?" Dave nodded, and Carole sat back, remembering. "Wow. That was a long time ago. Sure, I remember. Finn really wanted this drum kit."

"I think it stuck with them," he said. "I mean, it really made a difference, on a deep level. Sarah - she designed tattoos for us."

Carole's eyebrows went up. Sarah's skin was patterned everywhere she could reach with small designs, in black-and-white and color, since any good tattoo artist practices on herself before attempting anything on someone else's skin. But until now, the rest of the family had declined body art of their own, even though Sarah was clearly talented. "Really? You, too?"

"I don't think she would have let me say no," he shrugged, but his eyes were calm and clear. He pushed up his sleeve and showed her the stylized key decorating the inside of his arm. Carole exclaimed over the design, then went to tug on Finn's sleeve.

"We've been found out," Kurt said, smiling up at Dave. He carefully rolled up his own sleeve to reveal a gossamer blue morpho butterfly. Upon more careful inspection, the pattern of a question mark, a key, an hourglass and a hand could be found layered upon the butterfly's wings.

"Sarah," Carole breathed, tracing Kurt's arm with one gentle finger. "This is incredible."

"Now everybody wants all the designs," Kurt said, satisfaction clear on his face. Finn knelt down by Aidan and showed Carole his own hourglass, outlined in sturdy black, but filled with fine multicolored sand.

Lilly watched from the edges of the group, eyeing Dave's tattoo with questioning eyes. When Dave caught her glance, she reached under her shirt and pulled out a small silver key on a raggedy string of hemp. "I thought I'd imagined it all, but I had this, all this time, so I couldn't have made it up."

Dave blinked, and swallowed around the lump in his throat. "I didn't know how else to keep you safe. I don't- Dad and I, we never talked about why he didn't fight harder. Why he didn't make her leave you. _God, _Lilly-belle. You were just a baby. So was I, really. I did the best thing I could think of."

Lilly ran her thumb over the key and bit at her bottom lip with her teeth. "Mama tried to cut it off my neck once, when she realized what it was. I couldn't let her. Because even if I'd imagined the whole thing, this was the only part of you I had, Davey."

Puck's tight t-shirt didn't need to be rolled up to reveal his tribal hand tattoo. His arm slipped around Dave's back and tightened on his shoulder. "He was keeping you safe, even from a distance. Just like he did with Sarah. It's what he does."

Dave held Lilly's eyes. "I didn't do a good enough job, Lilly-belle. Not with you."

Lilly blinked back tears, and took an awkward step towards Dave. "I don't think either of us had much of a choice, brudder." Dave shuddered at the long-forgotten moniker from his childhood, and Puck clasped his shoulder even harder. "And Mama, well. She's a bitch on wheels on her best day, and there haven't been many of those in a long time." She tugged at the key again. "I knew you loved me, though. I always knew you were out there somewhere."

Sarah crossed the deck and slipped her hand into Lilly's. "You've always been with Dave. And with us, _all_ of us, because you're a part of him. We take care of each other here. Let us take care of you, too." Carole gathered the twins and Cleo and coaxed them into the other room, giving the five - the _six -_of them time together.

Dave leaned into Puck's chest, and Kurt put a comforting hand on his knee. He wasn't sure why he was having trouble breathing. He felt tethered to something he couldn't name, not anymore. It was the same feeling that used to send him to a razor, or out walking in the dark night. He hadn't felt it since finding his family.

Kurt must have sensed it, because he leaned in and whispered in Dave's ear. "Baby. What do you need?" His closeness took a hint of the edge off Dave's anxiety, but it wasn't enough.

"I don't know." Dave spoke through gritted teeth. He did what he always did when he was uncertain: he turned to Sarah to reveal the mysteries. She was right there, holding his hand.

"You're scared?" she said, and he nodded. There were no secrets between the five of them, only ideas yet undiscovered. She stroked back his hair from his face, watching him carefully. Then she turned to Lilly and held out her hand.

"What?" Lilly said, hesitating, one arm around the other.

"Will you come over?" Sarah beckoned, and Lilly moved in closer, facing her brother. "Touch the key," she urged. Lilly put out a cautious hand and put her fingertips on his arm. Dave met her eyes, anxiously waiting.

"Dave needs something from you." Sarah held Lilly in her appraising gaze. Lilly's eyes were wide, and a little apprehensive. "Can you give it to him?"

Lilly gasped at Sarah, and at Dave in turn. "What? What is it?"

Sarah sat, silently, and waited for Dave to find the right words. When he finally did, his voice was rough. "Absolution."

"For what?" Lilly shook her head in a search for understanding.

"For letting her take you. For not coming to find you sooner. For not fighting harder." There were more words, words Dave hadn't even known were rattling around in his head and heart. "For not being the brother you deserved. For not taking care of you. For what Mom did to you, to me. For _everything._"

And Sarah was tugging Kurt over, the strength, the stability of the three of them evident from the moment they touched. "Baby," he said, pleading, but Sarah forestalled him with a hand.

"He needs you to help him say goodbye," she said, the certainty in her eyes making him sit up and take notice. "Just as you said goodbye to someone, once."

Lilly's arms were scrabbling to wrap around him then, and he pulled her close. She felt the same in his arms as she had when they were kids. She was his sister, after all. He held her tightly, and listened to her whisper in his ear. "I forgive you, brudder."

Dave's eyes were wet, but he wasn't letting go, not yet. "I don't want to _need_her anymore," he ground out.

"You don't have to," Sarah said, but Kurt shook his head, kissing Dave's moist cheek.

"I know," he said. "But as much as you want to be the one to take care of _everybody,_baby, sometimes, someone has to take care of you, too. Because we're not butterflies." His voice was sad. "If it's not going to be your mom, who's it going to be?"

"You?" Dave was small and worried in this space, and Kurt reached out his hand to him. Dave gripped it back. Sarah's hand found a place in between theirs.

"And me," Puck said. He took Dave's other hand, and it was joined by Finn's.

"Is that enough?" Sarah asked.

Dave's eyes were screwed shut. "Enough for what?"

"Enough to let you say goodbye."

He let his breath out all in one gasp, and the four of them took up the slack, holding him up. "That's it," Puck murmured. "We've got you."

"Whenever you're ready," Kurt said quietly.

Each rasping breath brought him closer to where he needed to go, closer to _letting_go, to saying goodbye not only to the mother who had never been able to care for him, but also to that little boy who'd been left, alone and wanting.

He felt something rough and cool press into his palm, and Lilly was there with the others. His fingers closed around the jagged edges of the old key, and the combination of the sharpness in his hand and the gentleness of Lilly's arm around his waist cut the last of the string tethering him to his past.

"Goodbye, Mommy," he whispered. That was all he could say, but it was enough.

* * *

><p><span>Christmas: 2324 years old

The bed was still warm, but empty, when Sarah startled awake. She could hear dishes clanging in the kitchen, the noise of all her boys, the big ones and the babies, getting breakfast ready. She rolled over and stretched, feeling pretty good until the acrid scent of strong, black coffee sent her reeling out of bed and up the hall.

She wasn't going to be able to keep this secret much longer.

Sarah was rinsing her mouth out when she felt a cool hand against the back of her neck under her braid.

"Ginger Ale or crackers?" Lilly's voice was so much like Dave's, and she moved like he did, too. Soft, silent, and always watching.

Sarah shook her head. "Neither. Not yet. Damn coffee." She took a shaky breath and felt her stomach calm. "Why those? Ginger ale and crackers?"

Lilly shrugged. "Daughter of an alcoholic, remember?" She acted like it wasn't a big deal, but Sarah knew just how big a deal it really was. She hooked her arm through Lilly's and led her back to the master bedroom.

"Daughter of a recovering addict. I'd never forget." She knew she didn't need to say anything. All of their secrets had been laid bare for Lilly months ago. But a reminder never hurt.

Lilly settled herself into the middle of the bed among the blankets while Sarah rummaged around in the closet for one of Dave's sweatshirts. She slipped it on over her sweatpants and t-shirt, and sat down next to Lilly, who was eyeing her curiously.

"How far along?" Lilly asked casually. Sarah laughed.

"Five or six weeks. Just found out last week." She stretched her back and groaned. "I knew before the test did. Stupid queasy stomach. And the twins nursing, _fuck,_ that hurts. I hope it gets easier soon or they're going to wean, like, _now."_

"Congratulations." Lilly clasped her hand, but her curiosity was clearly about to spill over, so Sarah forestalled the question.

"I have no idea whose. But really - it doesn't matter, does it?"

Lilly bit her lip and blinked, and finally laughed. "I guess not."

"I'm telling them all tomorrow morning." Sarah had "I'm a big brother" t-shirts for the twins, wrapped up in some silly reindeer paper that she'd stuffed under the tree two days ago when the house was empty. And she'd bought two little onesies that said "I love my Daddies" that she was planning to put in Kurt and Dave's stockings. It was going to be sweet, and the boys would be so happy and surprised. If she could keep the secret until Christmas morning.

Lilly just held her hand and smiled. "I get to be an aunt again, and with a baby this time!"

"Of course. And don't let Dave force you into slave babysitting labor, either. A girl has to be kept in coffee and music somehow."

Lilly rolled her eyes. "Don't forget books, and bus fare. Granted that I won't have to pay room and board, but the transfer might put me behind if all my credits don't transfer."

Sarah put a hand on her barely-there bump. "Dave's going to be going crazy with his dissertation, and Kurt will be just starting his student teaching when _this_one comes along, so I think the Aunt Lilly Nanny Express will be plenty busy."

They could hear music drifting down the hall, and they followed it to the twin's room, where they discovered a Santa-hatted Puck kneeling on the edge of Ethan's toddler bed, strumming his guitar to an inspired rendition of "Jolly Old St. Nicholas." The twins were bopping around in their candy-cane striped footy pajamas, and Aidan was mimicing Puck's guitar-playing on a red plastic one.

"Good morning, Mama Bear," Puck grinned, as Aidan attempted to snatch the hat off his head for the fourth time. Sarah glared at him.

"You are worse than me at keeping a fricking secret," she said, fending off Ethan's loving, sticky hugs. "I'm not letting you near Kurt _or_Dave all day."

Puck shrugged. "Too late. Dave and I made breakfast already. With bacon and fresh orange juice."

"Do _not _mention breakfast," Sarah warned, clutching her stomach, while the twins stampeded for the door. "Really? They're not even dressed yet."

"Aw, come on, Sas - it's Christmas Eve," Puck said, kissing her on the cheek as he followed the twins into the hall, watching their precarious balance as they one-stepped it down the stairs. "They can deal with getting pancake syrup on their pajamas this once."

"He's good with the kids," Lilly said, and Sarah nodded, pulling the twins' comforters over their toddler beds and opening the blinds.

"I think he wishes he could have some of his own," she said. "But he's happy enough with ours. They belong to all of us, after all."

"Who belong to all of us?" Finn swung his head around the door frame.

"The munchkins." Sarah nodded towards the stairs, and Finn smiled at the sounds of the twins squealing over waffles and maple syrup.

Sarah took in Finn's pressed khakis and crisp button-down, and rolled her eyes. "I thought you weren't working today. Don't social workers get Christmas Eve off?"

Finn twirled his phone in his hand. "I'm on call, Sas. That's the problem with being the newbie. _I'm_the one at the end of the emergency number. Holidays can be a real crisis point for these kids. I'll be home when I can."

He kissed her on the cheek - the same one Puck had kissed - and scurried down the stairs. She heard the door open and slam closed just as a yawning Kurt wandered out of their bedroom at the end of the hall. She felt her stomach clench again and willed herself _not_to ruin their Christmas day surprise.

Kurt pressed a sleepy kiss against her neck, and ruffled Lilly's hair and kept moving, mumbling something about coffee. Sarah watched his retreating back. "Damn coffee."

"Don't forget we have to pick Dad, Carole and Cleo up at the airport at eleven," he called over his shoulder.

"I can do that," rumbled Dave's baritone in her ear, and she couldn't help shivering a little when his arms wrapped around her from behind. He dropped his hands down around her waist, and as she leaned up to kiss him, he lingered on her hips a little too long, and her heart sank as he took a surprised breath.

"You are _way _too fucking psychic," she groaned, as he swept her into a rib-crushing hug. "Watch out, or I might puke on you."

"Sas," he said into her hair, and his voice was so full of love and promise that she thought her heart might break. _Stupid hormones,_she thought, wiping her eyes on Dave's t-shirt. He gave her a wide, delighted smile. "For real?"

"No, I just like puking before breakfast." She pulled away from him and swatted playfully at his shoulder. "Of course for real, but you can't tell Kurt. It was supposed to be a fucking surprise."

Dave's eyes went wide, but he nodded in agreement. "I won't say a word."

Sarah held his eyes with hers, and spoke clearly. "Especially not to Carole and Burt."

"What are we not telling Carole and Burt?" Kurt asked, emerging from the bathroom, eyebrows inquisitive.

"About my transfer to Michigan," Lilly said calmly. "It's... a surprise."

"Okay," Kurt nodded, shrugging. He stepped into Dave, their bodies meeting perfectly, lips touching briefly, before continuing his passage through the hallway. Dave followed him back into the bedroom. The electricity between them was palpable, even after five years and two kids.

Lilly took Sarah's hand as they moved slowly down the stairs. "It's our first Christmas with you," Sarah said. "How's it feel? To not be with your mom, I mean?"

"Honestly?" Lilly blew out a breath. "It's a relief. I know Dave feels it too."

It was true. Dave was a changed man, even just from this summer. Sarah could sense the freedom he felt, not being tethered to his past, to the story of his missing sister. His life could continue, all on its own, now.

"Creating our own family - here, in this house, all of us together - it feels just right. The best kind of work." Sarah smiled at Lilly, and she squeezed her hand. "I'm glad you're with us."

Lilly squeezed back. "Me, too," she smiled. "C'mon. Do you think you can handle a plain waffle?"

Sarah nodded. "With Nutella. Baby likes chocolate!"

* * *

><p>Later that night, after the kids were fed and bathed and put to bed, and then sung to and read to and put <em>back<em>to bed, the adults gathered downstairs. Burt was helping Finn and Kurt lazily place presents in various quality of giftwrap under the tree. Carole was in the kitchen with Lilly, cleaning up from their dinner of appetizers and snacks. Sarah was on the sofa wrapped in a blanket, her knitting needles clicking softly as she worked a quick, comforting chunky scarf for Puck. Puck and Dave were . . . somewhere.

Carole padded softly into the living room and sat down next to Sarah, and handed over one of the two glasses of red wine she held in her hands. Sarah put her hand up to stop Carole, and shook her head.

Carole held her gaze, and at Sarah's brief nod she broke into a huge smile. She pulled Sarah into her arms. "Oh, baby. Congratulations."

Sarah took the chance to whisper in Carole's ear. "Kurt and Finn don't know yet."

"But the others?"

Sarah pulled away then and smiled sheepishly. "We're terrible at keeping secrets around here."

Burt was there, suddenly, his hand on Carole's shoulder. "What secrets are we keeping?"

Carole just smiled. "Nothing, honey. Just girl talk."

"No." Kurt was standing, backlit by the flickering lights of the Christmas tree, hands on his hips and his head cocked to the side. "There are lots of secrets in this house today. What's going on?"

"N-nothing." Sarah shook her head, and caught Lilly's gaze where she was standing in the doorway from the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a fat mug of hot chocolate. Lilly just smiled in support.

"Sas." Kurt's face was soft and open, and so full of love. "What's up?"

Sarah took a deep breath and pushed herself up off the couch. She moved softly to where Kurt was standing, and grabbed his hand, sliding it along her stomach, under her shirt. He let his palm settle there, and she could feel the warmth from his body seeping into her. He gasped slightly in her ear.

"How far?"

"Five, maybe six weeks."

He pulled away briefly before pulling her into a deep kiss. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, and she'd never been more whole than she was in that moment.

_Every touch our grace is multiplied_  
><em>Every kiss our souls are opened wide<em>  
><em>Every moment is precious and sanctified<em>

_And our time is filling like cups of honey wine_  
><em>Sweeter the water, the deeper the well<em>  
><em>Life is spilling out all over<em>  
><em>We're spilling out over ourselves<em>

_- Christopher Bingham_


End file.
